Quintana takes over lead in Tour de San Luis time trial

Image 1 of 36

The Movistar team secured double success in the stage 5 time trial at the Tour de San Luis, with Adriano Malori taking out a narrow stage victory over BMC's Taylor Phinney, and Nairo Quintana erasing his four-second deficit in the general classification to gain a more substantial 26-second lead over former leader Phil Gaimon (Garmin-Sharp).

For the third time in the first five stages, a rider in his first race for a new team delivered an early season victory, this time via Malori who moved to Movistar after spending four years at Lampre. The 25-year-old Italian started 26 minutes prior to Phinney, and his time of 22:11.55 topped previous hot seat holder Eloy Teruel (Jamis-Hagens-Berman) by more than a minute.

All eyes were on Phinney to see what time the 23-year-old American could produce, but he stopped the clock 2.66 seconds slower than Malori.

"To be honest, I wasn't expecting to win because Phinney was focused on taking the win here and was the number-one favourite," said Malori. "But once I got into the race, I realized I was rolling strong. I knew the parcours from last year's race, when I claimed 5th, and I knew my time was going to be good.

"It's a very important win for me, especially from a psychological point of view."

Conversely, Phinney received a psychological blow after falling tantalising short. Most frustrating for Phinney was the fact that he had some mechanical issues with his time trial bike. Unable to shift into his top gear of 54x11, he had to settle for a top gear of 54x12.

Nonetheless, Phinney assumed responsibility for the narrow defeat. "Personally I am quite disappointed," said Phinney. "I definitely wanted to win today. I made a tactical error on my part by not asking the mechanics to a 55 or 56 tooth chainring on my front set. When I rode it this morning I thought it wouldn't be necessary but 75, 78k an hour going down on that tailwind section I just had to stop pedalling a couple of times.

"I knew that Malori would be quite strong. I knew with him going to Movistar he'd be on his TT bike a bit more and he's been a great time trialist for a couple of years now. Hats off to him."

While the duel between Malori and Phinney for stage honours took place midway through the day's start order, the fight for the leader's jersey was a two-man battle amongst the day's final two starters: Quintana and Gaimon.

The lightweight climber pushed through blustery winds on a flat course in 23:29, good enough for 16th place on the day, while Gaimon conceded 30 seconds to Quintana and dropped to second on general classification.

While the Colombian may have seemed out of his element on the parcours, the outcome wasn't a surprise to him.
"I thought I could do it," said Quintana. "I knew that if it didn't happen then would have at least been very close. I felt really good during the race and was able to keep my rhythm throughout."

While Gaimon was disappointed with the day's outcome, the rider just
five days into his first WorldTour team contract was pragmatic about surrendering the jersey to a rider with the palmares of Quintana.

"I had no idea how I would time trial compared to these guys," said Gaimon. "I felt all right. I haven't done a whole lot of stage races
this long so I was kind of fatigued, but I didn't blow up. I know I used everything up at the end."

Full Results