Today’s ninth stage of the Tour de France is from Vannes to Plumelec. What’s unusual is that team time trials normally take place in the opening days of the race, rather than nine days in.
The teams of the main GC contenders, Team Sky (Chris Froome), Movistar (Nairo Quintana), Tinkoff-Saxo (Alberto Contador) and Astana (Vincenzo Nibali) will be all expected to be amongst the leading teams. Of these teams, perhaps Movistar, could potentially gain time on the others.
Tipped by many to take the win are BMC Racing. They’re currently the World TTT champions, with four of that winning team racing in the Tour de France. If they win, it could give Tejay van Garderen the opportunity to take over the yellow jersey. Currently, he sits just 13″ behind race leader, Froome.
Sky lost 35 seconds to BMC in the Dauphiné TTT, and 31 to Astana over 24.5 kilometres. A similar result would see Van Garderen in yellow. Team Sky do have the advantage of being off last though, so will know what times the other teams have set.
Orica-GreenEdge, were the last team to have won the TTT at the Tour de France in 2013, and they will be three riders down due to the abandons of Simon Gerrans, Daryl Impey and Michael Albasini after crashing.
The time is taken with the fifth rider on each team, and this will make things challenging on a lumpy parcours as teams will not be able to afford too many riders. However, the stage is only 28kms long.
