Tour de France: Chris Froome retains yellow as BMC Racing win TTT

Chris Froome retained the yellow jersey and extended his lead over his fellow Tour de France favourites after Team Sky finished a close second behind winners BMC Racing on stage nine’s team time trial.

BMC Racing stopped the clock on a rolling 28km course from Vannes to Plumelec in 32min 15sec, which was just 0.62 seconds faster than Team Sky and four seconds ahead of Nairo Quintana’s Movistar in third.

Alberto Contador’s Tinkoff-Saxo finished 28 seconds down in fourth place, while Vincenzo Nibali’s Astana were 35 seconds back in fifth.

It means Froome’s advantage at the top of the general classification over second-placed Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing) is cut to 12 seconds, but the Briton now leads fifth-placed Contador by 1min 3sec overall, ninth-placed Quintana by 1min 59sec and 13th-placed Vincenzo Nibali by 2min 22sec.

Van Garderen said: "We were getting positive splits out there, Obviously we don't get all the information but we knew we were no a really good one. In a perfect world we would have taken the stage and the yellow jersey, but we will take the stage."

Astana were the first of the general classification teams down the start ramp and although they took the lead at the time, their mark was comfortably swept aside by Movistar by 31 seconds.

Froome, Van Garderen and Contador's teams were the last three to get under way and although Tinkoff-Saxo fell off the pace early, Team Sky and BMC Racing were dead level at the 10km intermediate split.

Team Sky had edged ahead by just one second at the 20km time check, but despite going down to the minimum five riders early, BMC Racing rallied over the final sector to clinch victory by the narrowest of margins.

Monday is a rest day, but the Tour resumes on Tuesday with the race's first mountain stage and first summit finish, a 167km day from Tarbes to La-Pierre-Saint-Martin. Follow the action with our live blog from 1pm BST.

Stage nine result

1 BMC Racing, 32:15

2 Team Sky, +1

3 Movistar, +4

4 Tinkoff-Saxo, +28

5 Astana, +35

6 IAM Cycling, +38

7 Etixx – Quick-Step, +45

8 Lampre-Merida, +48

9 LottoNL-Jumbo, +1:14

10 Ag2r-La Mondiale, +1:24

General classification

1  Chris Froome (GB) Team Sky, 31:34:12

2 Tejay van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing, +12secs

3 Greg van Avermaet (Bel) BMC Racing, +27

4 Peter Sagan (Svk) Tinkoff-Saxo, +38

5 Alberto Contador (Esp) Tinkoff-Saxo, +1:03

6 Rigoberto Uran (Col) Etixx – Quick-Step, +1:18

7 Alejandro Valverde (Esp) Movistar, +1:50

8 Geraint Thomas (GB) Team Sky, +1:52

9 Nairo Quintana (Col) Movistar, +1:59

10 Zdenek Stybar (Cze) Etixx – Quick-Step, +1:59

Selected others

13 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Astana, +2:22