Sylvain Chavanel (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) won the fifth stage of the Eneco Tour, covering the time trial course from Sittard to Geleen in the fastest time.
He was unable, however, to dethrone Lars Boom from the top of the general classification, as the Dutch rider finished tenth in the stage to maintain a gap of four seconds.
The French time trial champion showcased his prowess against the clock to take his fifth win of the season, and his third time trial victory.
Bradley Wiggins' (Sky) time of sixteen minutes and thirteen seconds proved the quickest for much of the afternoon, but he eventually lost his lead to Jesse Sergent (Radioshack-Leopard), who put five seconds into the 2012 Tour de France champion.
By the end of the day, three more riders posted faster times than Wiggins, namely the winner Chavanel, youngster Tom Dumoulin (Argos-Shimano), and classics specialist Sebastian Langeveld (Orica-GreenEdge), who finished first, second and fourth respectively.
The technical nature of the course, plus its short length of 13.2 kilometres, were not ideally suited to Wiggins' strength against the clock, so he will not be too disappointed with his time.
Among those who may be disappointed are Philippe Gilbert (BMC) and Zdeneck Stybar (Omega Pharma-Quick Step), whose GC challenges have been checked following mediocre times. Boom's main challenger now appears to be Chavanel, who ought to excel in the hilly parcours this weekend.
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Further down the standings, Ian Stannard leads Sky's chances, creeping into the top ten overall with an impressive ride.
Result
2013 Eneco Tour, stage five: Sittard-Geleen 13.2km ITT
Stephen Puddicombe is a freelance journalist for Cycling Weekly, who regularly contributes to our World Tour racing coverage with race reports, news stories, interviews and features. Outside of cycling, he also enjoys writing about film and TV - but you won't find much of that content embedded into his CW articles.
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