BMC has won Stage 3 of the Dauphine Libere. The world team time trial champion powered over the mostly flat, 24.5-km course from Roanne to Montagny in 29:54. Astana took second place at 0:04, and Movistar finished third at 0:05. Rohan Dennis (BMC), who took the yellow jersey in this race two years ago, has moved back into the overall lead.

FDJ was the first starter, but BMC, the third starter, set the benchmark for the day. The American squad posted its 29:54 and waited for other teams to finish. Astana had trouble getting into formation and dropped Alessandro Vanotti and Dmitriy Grudev, but the Kazakh team trailed BMC by only 0:04 at the checkpoint, a margin that held until the finish.

Etixx-Quick Step, like Astana, had trouble with riders who could not keep pace. Martin Velits and Niki Terpstra were dropped, and David De La Cruz had difficulty staying with the team. At the checkpoint, the Belgian squad was 0:11 behind BMC, and the team lost an additional 0:07 before the finish.

Movistar started slowly, but the Spanish squad gradually gained momentum to take third place and position Alejandro Valverde well.

Two teams remained on the course, Cannondale-Garmin and Sky. Cannondale-Garmin did well over the first half, but the American squad had trouble remaining organized and lost time over the second half to finish seventh at 0:43. Sky had high hopes for positioning Chris Froome well, but the British team was at 0:17 at the checkpoint and finished sixth at 0:35, not where Froome had hoped to be.

Among the contenders, Tejay van Garderen profited most from the team time trial. He is second, just behind Dennis. Tour de France champion Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) is at 0:04, while Valverde is a further second behind. Julian Alaphilippe (Etixx-Quick Step) is 14^th at 0:18, while Froome is 24^th at 0:35, and defending champion Andrew Talansky (Cannondale-Garmin) is 27^th at 0:43.

Dennis, the former world hour record holder, was entrusted with setting the pace for BMC. "Since we knew Rohan was our strongest guy, we had him set the pace and then it was up to the rest of us to decide how long of pulls we could do at that pace," van Garderen said. "We aimed for the winning pace and told the guys if you can hold it, you deserve to be there. If you can't hold it, then you are going to get dropped. We finished with the minimum amount of guys, but we had the best time."

Despite being the designated pacesetter, Dennis did not intend to cross the finish line first. "We didn't actually talk about who would go over the line first," Dennis said. "It was just whoever got there first. Tejay took over with 500 meters to go, and I saw Dylan [Teuns] was just off the wheel. So I backed off and paced him back on. I just came at Tejay and Daniel [Oss] and Joey [Rosskopf] and went past them, wanting to help them get to the line as quickly as possible."

In the overall, Dennis leads van Garderen and Andriy Grivko (Astana). Stage 4 will probably not change this state of affairs. The rolling, 228-km run from Anneyron to Sisteron will feature three categorized climbs, but none harder than a Category 3, and they will take on that with almost half of the stage to go. The sprinters will decide this one. Who will win? Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis)? Luka Mezgec (Giant-Alpecin)? Check in at www.roadcycling.com and find out!