The 2012 Critérium du Dauphiné was the sixty-fourth running of the Critérium du Dauphiné cycling stage race; a race rated as a World Tour event on the UCI calendar, the highest classification such an event can have. The race consisted of eight stages, beginning with a prologue in Grenoble on 3 June, and concluded in Châtel on 10 June. The race was organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation, the same group that organises the Tour de France. It was viewed as a great preparation for July's Tour de France, hence why a majority of the contenders for the general classification of the major tour participated in the Dauphiné. It featured mountainous stages as well as an individual time trial quite similar in length to those that awaited the riders in the Tour. The race was won for the second successive year by rider Bradley Wiggins, who claimed the leader's yellow and blue jersey after the first stage, extending his race-leading advantage after winning the fourth stage individual time trial, and ultimately maintained that advantage. Wiggins became only the third rider to win the Dauphiné and Paris–Nice – a race that Wiggins had won in March – in the same year after Jacques Anquetil (1963 and 1965) and Eddy Merckx (1971) had previously done so. Wiggins' winning margin over his team-mate and runner-up Michael Rogers was one minute and seventeen seconds, and 's Cadel Evans completed the podium, nine seconds down on Rogers. In the race's other classifications, rider Cayetano Sarmiento won the King of the Mountains classification, Evans won the green jersey for the points classification, 's Wilco Kelderman won the young rider classification, with finishing at the head of the teams classification by over thirteen minutes, after placing four riders inside the final overall top ten placings. Participating teams As the Critérium du Dauphiné was a UCI World Tour event, all eighteen UCI ProTeams were invited automatically and obligated to send a squad. Four other squads were given wildcard places into the race, and as such, formed the event's 22-team peloton. All twenty-two squads that competed in the Dauphiné contested the Tour de France later in the year. The twenty-two teams that competed in the race were: Schedule The route for the race was announced on 27 March 2012. Stages Prologue 3 June 2012 — Grenoble, , individual time trial (ITT) The Dauphiné began with its traditional short individual