Dan Martin digs deep to keep hopes alive at Critérium du Dauphiné

Team Sky rider Peter Kennaugh lurches for the line at the end of today's third stage of the Criterium du Dauphiné. Though it wasn't the ideal afternoon for Nicolas Roche and Philip Deignan's team as they conceded 35 seconds to winners BMC, they still kept themselves in the hunt for yellow with Chris Froome (second wheel).

By Brian Canty

Nicolas Roche’s Team Sky squad endured a difficult afternoon on stage three of the Criterium du Dauphine today, losing 35 seconds in the team time-trial in what was the first general classification shake-up of the week-long race.

They relinquished the yellow jersey which Peter Kennaugh held since his opening day stage win on Sunday while team leader Chris Froome is now 24th overall.

The latter shook his head in disappointment crossing the finish line at the end of the 24.5km test from Roanne to Montagny but told reporters there's a long way to go yet.

“Obviously we were hoping for better day but we had a few issues out on the road," he said.

“We went a little bit hard in the first part and blew a few guys there, and then we had one or two mechanicals in the mix,” he said afterwards.

“There are a few things to learn there but it’s still early days in the race. Hopefully it’ll be hard days in the mountains.”

It certainly wasn’t one of their better days as two of their formation, Ian Stannard and Wout Poels, became distanced early on and Luke Rowe followed suit after a mechanical around the midway point.

That meant they needed the remaining five to stick together as it was the time of the fifth rider over the line which counted as their time for the day.

Nicolas Roche clung on as Froome hammered a furious pace at the front, while Philip Deignan was also in the front coming across the line in what was an excellent display by him and augers very well for his Tour de France chances next month.

Dan Martin, fifth in line, on the way to keeping his GC chances in tact at the Dauphiné today by limiting his losses to 43 seconds. The latter half of the race is where we expect to see Martin and defending champion Andrew Talansky really come into their own.

At the three-week Grand Tour which starts on July 4th there’s another team time-trial so today’s effort was something of a dress rehearsal for that.

Sky sports director Nicolas Portal admitted things hadn’t gone to plan on the day.

“It’s disappointing but we’ll obviously keep fighting. We have to ride aggressively now in the mountains stages, especially with the bonus seconds available.

“There’s still plenty to fight for, Froomey, Pete and Nico are only 35 seconds behind and we’ll make the race hard in the days to come and hopefully move up on the GC.”

Dan Martin’s Cannondale-Garmin squad were one place below Team Sky in 7th and will be reasonably happy with that, given some disastrous team efforts in recent times, most notably the Giro d’Italia where they were 19th of 22 squads.

Their line-up this week is much more experienced, however, and with defending champion Andrew Talansky, Martin and Ramunas Navardauskas all at 43 seconds they’ve a few cards to play.

Talansky is certainly going well as he did some long pulls on the front as they also finished with the minimum five.

Tomorrow's stage is a 228-kilometre leg from Anneyron to Sisteron and should be a day for the sprinters’ teams but a category four climb combined with a lumpy run in to the finish could prove disruptive to the sprint trains.

Rohan Dennis is the new leader of the race after his BMC team set the quickest time, clocking 29:58, four seconds faster than Astana and five quicker than Movistar.