It was fun while it lasted for Peter Sagan. The young rider for team Liquigas-Cannondale fell out of the Top 10 overall standings completely at the 2012 Tour of California after holding onto the yellow jersey for three straight stages. He had no misconceptions about what was likely to happen during the Stage 5 time trial. Dave Zabriskie opened up a 34-second lead in the overall standings with a time of 35:59.21 on Thursday. Sagan was nearly three and a half minutes behind.
West Chester's Scott Zwizanski actually fared well in the race relative to his conspicuous finishes over the previous four stages. He came in 34th place overall on the stage, 2:22 behind Zabriskie. He came in second among his Optum Pro Cycling teammates. Thomas Zirbel was just eight seconds faster.
Optum is still in last place by a wide margin overall among the 16 teams on the Tour. The team raced well on Thursday, however, coming in 10th place. They were six minutes behind team Garmin-Barracuda's winning time of 1:49:52.
Here are the Top 10 riders atop the standings after Thursday. You can check out the full results at the official site of the 2012 Tour of California.
1) Dave Zabriskie (GRM) - 20:29:31
2) Tejay Van Garderen (BMC) - -:34
3) Robert Gesink (RAB) - :39
4) Andrew Talansky (GRM) - :48
5) Peter Velits (OPQ) - :49
6) Luke Durbridge (OGE) - 1:01
7) Tom Danielson (GRM) - 1:07
8) Rory Sutherland (UHC) - 1:10
9) Cameron Meyer (OGE) - 1:26
10) Markel Irizar (RNT) - 1:29
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