The team time trial ended dramatically for Team LottoNL-Jumbo. Early in the race Antwan Tolhoek and Floris De Tier crashed. Therefore the team missed some riders in the final and ended-up fifteenth.

The team started well, but after three kilometres Antwan Tolhoek crashed. “I heard a crash behind me”, Steven Kruijswijk described the situation afterwards. “Floris De Tier couldn’t escape. So we lost two riders early in the race. It was a bad start.”

After that, the team tried to organize themselves. “But unfortunately we failed to do so. We tried our best, but it was certainly not the start we had hoped for. Fortunately, there still are twenty stages to come. We have to forget this as fast as possible. We will get enough chances. Of course you don’t want to lose those seconds, but we can’t change what happened. Hopefully, our guys will recover soon.”

Sports director Grischa Niermann was also disappointed. “We started in a very bad way”, he stated. “It could have been worse, but we hope to have more luck in the upcoming days.”