Nicolas Roche’s squad performs strongly in team time trial

Nicolas Roche's Team Sunweb squad had a strong showing on stage two of the Tour de France, with the German-registered outfit racing to fourth place in the Brussels team time trial.

The riders finished 26 seconds behind the victorious Team Jumbo-Visma squad and five seconds off the third-placed Deceuninck-QuickStep.

“We really went all in to try and win the team time trial today and we prepared well for it,” said Team Sunweb coach Aike Visbeek. “Unfortunately we had two mechanical issues near the finish which meant Nico [Roche] and Wilco [Keldermann] spent some extra energy and that possibly cost us second or third place. However, we did what we could and the guys gave it their all out there. In the end the winner had the strongest team and they proved that today.”

Dan Martin's UAE Team Emirates squad had a disappointing showing, finishing 16th out of the 22 squads. He would have hoped for a stronger performance in the test. Roche is now 40th overall, 45 seconds behind the ongoing race leader Mike Teunissen (Team Jumbo-Visma). Martin is 92nd, one minute 13 seconds back.