Rohan Dennis takes Criterium du Dauphine lead as BMC win TTT

Peter Kennaugh lost the race lead and Chris Froome’s hopes of overall victory took a major blow as Team Sky finished sixth in the Criterium du Dauphine’s stage three team time trial, which was won by BMC Racing.

BMC stopped the clock on a 24.5km course from Roanne to Montagny in 29min 58sec, four seconds ahead of runners-up Astana and five seconds quicker than third-placed Movistar.

Team Sky finished 35 seconds down, which saw Kennaugh replaced in the yellow jersey by BMC’s Rohan Dennis, who is on the same time as team-mate Tejay van Garderen in second and four seconds ahead of Astana’s Andriy Grivko in third.

Kennaugh is now 19th, 23 seconds back, but the bigger blow for Team Sky is the fact that Froome has fallen to 31 seconds adrift of Astana’s Vincenzo Nibali and 30 seconds down on Movistar's Alejandro Valverde – his two main rivals for overall victory.

The performance was also a wake-up call for the British squad ahead of next month's Tour de France, which features a potentially important 28km team time trial on stage nine. 

Froome said: “Obviously we were hoping for better day, but we had a few issues out on the road. We went a little bit hard in the first part and blew a couple of guys there, and then we had one or two mechanicals in the mix.

“There are a few things to learn from, definitely, but this is still early days in the race and hopefully it's going to be good hard racing once we get up into the mountains. We are going to have to look at other parts of the race now to try to make up that time."

The eight-day Dauphine continues on Wednesday with a rolling 228km fourth stage from Anneyron to Sisteron.

Stage three result

1 BMC Racing, 29:58
2 Astana, +4sec
3 Movistar, +5
4 Etixx – Quick-Step, +18
5 Orica-GreenEdge, +23
6 Team Sky, +35
7 Cannondale-Garmin, +43
8 Lampre-Merida, +47
9 IAM Cycling, +50
10 LottoNL-Jumbo, +54

General classification

1 Rohan Dennis (Aus) BMC Racing, 8:00:37
2 Tejay van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing, same time
3 Andriy Grivko (Ukr) Astana, +4secs
4 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Astana, st
5 Lieuwe Westra (Ned) Astana, st
6 Rein Taaramae (Est) Astana, st
7 Michele Scarponi (Ita) Astana, st
8 Gorka Izagirre (Esp) Movistar, +5
9 Alejandro Valverde (Esp) Movistar, st
10 John Gadret (Fra) Movistar, st
Selected other
24 Chris Froome (GB) Team Sky, +35