Stage 5 of the Volta a Catalunya didn`t go to plan for Tejay van Garderen and BMC with the American losing his overall lead and dropping to sixth place on the general classification. Alejandro Valverde and Movistar, thorns in BMC`s side this week, took the win and now leads the American by 1:18 minute. On the road to the Tortosa summit, Trek-Segafredo and Movistar cranked up the pace to cause a selection and crack van Garderen. Samuel Sánchez stuck with van Garderen, taking his teammate to the line 1:53 minutes down on Valverde. While van Garderen was hoping for more on the queen stage, he explained there were several important takeaways ahead of his Giro d`Italia objective.ADVERTISEMENT `I felt really good and confident going into the final climb but the pace and the gradient weren`t treating me very well, and I couldn`t hold their wheel in the end. I`m obviously a little disappointed but there is still a long way to until my main goal of the year, and I feel like I am constantly making forward progress,` van Garderen said. `To win here would have been a good confidence boost but I don`t think it`s time to panic. I definitely know what I need to work on during this next phase of training and I am ready to put in what`s needed to hopefully reach the end goal.` `The race is certainly not over. Tomorrow is going to be a brutally hard stage, so it is not a time to sit up. We can now regroup as a team and see what we can do and look for other opportunities over the next two days.` Having already lost Rohan Dennis to a chest infection, BMC lost Ben Hermans to illness on the morning of stage 5 to ensure it would be a tough day in the saddle. However, sports director Jackson Stewart was confident the team could hold onto the leader`s jersey but will now re-set with two days to come.
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