Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) is widely tipped to move into the race lead in the Vuelta a Espana time trial. However, the Dutchman was keen to play down expectation on his rest day press conference.

“It could happen, maybe it couldn’t happen," he said when asked about his chance to win the race. "Let’s say I take the lead tomorrow, it could happen. Two minutes is a lot of time, and it’s not as easy as some journalists think.

“I’m going to do my best, but there’s three days to go until Madrid after the time trial. And although my team is strong and very committed, they’re not the strongest squad here on the climbs. If I take it, it’s going to be very difficult to defend.”

"The GC was not amongst our original aims, the idea was to go for bunch sprints with Degenkolb. During the first few days, I was very motivated to show everybody I had come back with a bang after my injury in the Tour. But finding myself in fourth spot on GC, that’s something I didn’t expect.

“My climbing is improving and improving, I knew last year in the Tour de Suisse, where I got fifth, that I was a lot better. But to be a real GC contender in a three-week Tour, that’s something new and something quite surprising.”

“Yesterday was the day I realised I could go for the podium. Before that I still thought I could have a bad day. Yesterday I could have lost five minutes. When I only lost 20 seconds on Purito, I knew the podium was possible.”