Froome still in yellow
July 12, 2015
BMC averaged a team best average speed of just a shade over 52 kilometers an hour in Sunday's time trials, a 28-kilometer stretch from Vannes to Plumelec. That allowed BMC to edge Team Sky by a mere six-tenths of a second in stage nine.
But that didn't matter to Sky rider Chris Froome of England. The 2013 Tour winner retained the overall leader's yellow jersey heading into the event's first rest day on Monday.
Froome's current time is 31 hours, 34 minutes and 12 seconds. That's 12 seconds better than American BMC rider Tejay Van Garderen.
"If you had told me I'd be in yellow at this point I would not have believed it," Froome told reporters. "It's definitely not for me to be attacking at the moment. Right now the biggest rival is Tejay van Garderen."
Van Garderen seemed to agree.
"We knew we were on a good one," he said after the stage. "On a perfect day we would have taken yellow too, but still a great win. In a perfect world I would have taken the jersey."
Two-time champion Alberto Contador is 1 minute and 3 seconds behind Froome. The two other pre-race favorites Nairo Quintana and Vincenzo Nibali sit 1 minute 59 seconds and 2 minutes 22 seconds back respectively.