The duo had to ride as fast as possible
in order to finish within the allowed
time cut of 18 minutes. Eventually they
came in just over 13 minutes behind
winner Mark Cavendish (HTC-
Highroad). "In the road book these stages are
marked out as easy stages so you
can't afford to lose much time. We rode
full gas to make it to the finish line
before the time cut. Eventually we had
a good margin but the finale could have been even tougher or more
windy and then we would lose much
more time," Engels said.