Team Orica Greenedge won the team time trial by less than one second on Tuesday on the fourth stage of the Tour de France to put veteran Australian rider Simon Gerrans in the race leader’s yellow jersey.
Considered an outsider to win the 25-kilometre (15.5-mile) dash along the streets of the southern seaport of Nice, Orica just beat early pace-setter Omega Pharma-Quickstep by .75 seconds with the top four teams finishing within 10 seconds of each other. Orica finished in a time of 25 minutes, 56 seconds.
“I couldn’t have imagined this would happen. It’s a dream for me, my team and a lot of people in Australia as well,” said Gerrans, who was speaking in French. “My first coach was Phil Anderson, who was the first Australian to wear the yellow jersey. So to do that as well is something special.”
The 33-year-old Gerrans, who won Monday’s third stage in a sprint finish, takes over the overall lead from Belgian rider Jan Bakelants.
“I knew there were some special stages for me in the first week,” Gerrans said. “It’s a huge satisfaction to win the stage and take the yellow jersey. We’ll try and hold it for a couple of days now.”
The Orica riders formed a circle and then hugged and slapped each other on the back when they were sure of the win.
“We’re a bunch of friends in the team, we’ve known each other for a long time,” Gerrans said. “So this is a team win and this jersey is for the team as well.”
Tour favourite Chris Froome’s Sky team finished third, three seconds off the pace, while rival Alberto Contador’s Saxo-Tinkoff finished a further six seconds back.
Bakelants lost the leader’s jersey because his RadioShack team finished way behind. He narrowly avoided a crash as he went perilously close to hitting some railings.
Froome is three seconds behind Gerrans, who is not considered a Tour challenger, and two-time Tour champion Contador is six seconds behind Froome.
The peloton returned to mainland France after three stages in the searing heat and sinewy climbs of Corsica.
Garmin-Sharp finished in sixth place.