HTC-COLUMBIA’S ARNDT MOVES INTO SECOND OVERALL AFTER TT WIN AT ROUTE DE FRANCE

San Luis Obispo, CA – 12th August 2010 – HTC-Columbia’s Judith Arndt took the victory of stage four of Route de France on Thursday clocking the fastest time in the 24.3km time trial in Saint Georges/Baulche. The win moves her into second place in the general classification, only one second behind leader Annemiek Van Vleuten, with two stages remaining in the race.

“It was a good race for me,” said Arndt. “I felt good the whole way. The roads are dead here so maybe it helped that I’ve been training in Australia on similar roads, but overall it was a really nice course. A little bit windy and a few smaller hills.

Arndt gained precious time on some of her GC competitors in Wednesday’s stage by making it into the 13 riders break that gained over three minutes on the field.

“We worked hard to get the advantage yesterday but towards the end of that stage I was able to save some energy and sit on because we also had Adrie [Visser] and Ina [Teutenberg] in the break and they worked to keep the gap high.

“However I’m still one second behind on Annemiek and she is riding well and can sprint really well. The next two stages are harder than the previous stages which is good. We’ll have to sit down tonight and come up with a plan of how to take GC. I will try everything for sure, but it’s not going to be easy.”