Four Time World Time Trial Champion Fabian Cancellara led Leopard Trek out of the start house for the team time trial on day two of the Tour de France. The head of the nine-rider line took a long pull on the front before dropping back to allow his teammates their turn at the head of affairs. At the first intermediate time check, the team clocked a provisional third place time. Holding a steady, grueling pace, Cancellara led the team across the finish line in a provisional third place that would be good for fourth at the end of the stage.

“I’m satisfied with how the race went today,” said Andy Schleck. “We proved we are a solid team and that we have good chemistry. This is important when we are fighting to win the Tour.”

“Because we have such big engines, in the second half of the time trial, it wasn’t necessary for me to take the lead,” Andy continued. “I could limit the energy I expended by sitting behind. My share of the speed wasn’t as high the others. Because I couldn’t bring the speed up to where it needed to be to win the stage, it made more sense to let Fabian, Maxime [Monfort], Linus [Gerdemann] and Jakob [Fuglsang] take the bigger part of the workload.”

Cancellara, Gerdemann and Fuglsang led the Schleck brothers across the line in 24:53, narrowly missing the podium. Garmin-Cervélo took their first-ever Tour de France stage win as they crossed the line in what would prove to be an unbeatable 24:48 over the 23 kilometer course. Four seconds back, a mere second separated second-placed BMC from fifth place HTC-Highroad.

Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto) ceded the race lead to Thor Hushovd (Garmin-Cervélo) who will wear yellow at the start of stage three in Olonne-sur-Mer tomorrow. Gerdemann remains Leopard trek’s highest-placed rider in fifth with Fränk just behind in sixth and Cancellara in seventh. Andy slots in three places back in tenth. All four riders are currently four seconds down on Hushovd.

“It’s satisfying for me to see us put in such a strong showing,” said Andy. “In the general classification, we are now ahead of several big teams. This was a good day for us.”

The peloton travels to Brittany tomorrow where it faces the first flat stage expected to favor the pure sprinters.