The time trial was the final big Tour de Franc goal for Orica-GreenEDGE who had hoped that Svein Tuft and Luke Durbridge could finish in the top 10. Having come up short against several GC riders, the team says that the fatigue took its toll on their two specialists.

Current and five-time Canadian time trial champion Svein Tuft has finish 15th in the 54km individual time trial on the penultimate day of the Tour de France.

Tuft, who had targeted the stage, finished the challenging race against the clock in 1:09:44, 3minutes 23seconds behind clear winner Tony Martin (OPQ, 1:06:21).

West Australian Luke Durbridge secured two top-twenty finishers for ORICA-GreenEDGE stopping the clock at 1:09:59 in 19th position.

“We looked at the course this morning and it was a very solid 54km,” sport director Matt White said. 

“It was very up and down and wasn’t the fastest of time trials.  After twenty days of racing it was a real slog.

“They will be a little disappointed with those results to not go top ten. 

“There wasn’t much time between their results and a top ten but they definitely would have liked to have finished in the top ten.”

As the Tour comes to a close, fatigue played a significant role in the results of the remaining 164 riders.

“The time trial is very different after 20 days than in the first week,” White explained. 

“It’s more about how you can handle the fatigue of the Tour de France than how good of a time trialist you are.

“(Leopold) Konig and (Vincenzo) Nibali are certainly not time trialists, but they are the guys that have handled the fatigue better than others, have been able to run top five in a very long time trial. 

“In a normal time trial, they would not beat our specialists but that is the difference of stage 20 versus a time trial in the first five days.”