Leopold König (NetApp-Endura)(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Paul Voss and Jan Barta (NetApp-Endura)(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Leo König's (NetApp-Endura) aspiration for a high overall placing at the Tour de France suffered a blow as he crashed on the ascent to Gérardmer La Mauselaine losing time to his rivals. Although König moved up to 24th overall, he is now 7:35 minutes down on yellow jersey holder Vincenzo Nibali (Astana).
König was with the select GC group at the front of the race behind Blel Kadri (Ag2r) — who rode to the win having been in the day's breakaway — before his crash halted any ambitions for a good result despite feeling good.
"Today our riders worked well together and everything worked out just the way we had planned," said the team's director sportif Enrico Poitschke.
"Leo's legs were good, and I think it was easy to see that he was in a good mood. He rode into a good position up until his unfortunate crash. He lost three minutes to the other riders in the general classification, which is of course a lot. We will now have to see how the injury this morning will affect him. Then we will decide what to do about the general classification, i.e., if it makes sense to continue pursuing this goal or if we should instead focus on the individual stages.
"Right now, I am assuming that we will still have our eyes set on finishing in the top 15 overall."
Despite finishing in 38th place, König was the team's second best finisher on the stage behind Tiago Machado who was 34th.
