Astana takes 8th place in Tour de France Stage 3
ASTANA. KAZINFORM - An eighth place for the seven remaining riders of Astana Pro Team on today's Team Time Trial, after Luis Leon Sanchez had to quit the race yesterday because of a crash. In Cholet, BMC Racing Team was the fastest team of the day, Kazinform has learnt from the club's official website.
The whole team did a super effort, and with seven guys we can be really satisfied with what we did. It gives a lot of extra time in the front for everybody when you lose a guy, but we had our tactic and we rode it smart. We did this the whole way and that's why we finished on the place that we did. I knew we would probably were going to lose some time today, but because of the seconds of the first stage there is no serious damage for the general classification, as there's still a long way to go. For now I'm looking forward for the races to come, especially for the cobbles, said Jakob Fuglsang.
I think it's a good result to be in the top ten, not far from the first teams of today. If we had Luis Leon Sanchez still with us, we could have been even 25 seconds faster. Even with seven riders, we still performed better than some of our main competitors. Our guys showed today that when you're motivated, you can achieve a lot. That's why I congratulated all the riders, and now we'll be looking forward to the next stages, noted Alexander Vinokurov.