Columbia's Judith Arndt placed third in Saturday's penultimate stage of Thuringen Rundfahrt moving herself into the overall race lead with one stage remaining.

Arndt finished behind Karin Thürig and Christiane Soeder of Cervelo Lifeforce in the 18.6km time trial, earning the yellow jersey by a margin of 22 seconds over Nürnberger's Trixi Worrack.

"I'm very happy with my time trial," explained Arndt. "I'm glad we were able to put some time into the Cervelo Time Trialists in yesterdays stage, but I expect them to be very agressive tomorrow so we will have a lot of work do to."

Arndt won the 2007 edition of Thuringen by less than a second and hopes to defend title tomorrow.

"It's been very hard racing as is usual here," said Team Director Petra Rossner. "We only have four riders and they are tired but we will fight hard tomorrow to keep the overall lead."

The final stage is a 127.6km course around the town of Zeulenroda.