"Despite this being my first race of the season, I felt confident. But it was a hard course. The TT was 23k of flat but with a terrible lateral wind. It was hard to stay upright on the bike at times. Then the last 2k were uphill to Mont-Saint-Clair and that was really steep sometimes."

"On that climb I lost time to Lars Boom but on the other hand I took a lot of time on the other competitors during the entire TT. I feel no regrets. I’m happy with this performance, though a second spot is always hard to digest. I prefer to win,” said Monfort.

 

20-year-old Bob Jungels also showed a good effort, finishing in 6th place 51 seconds behind the stage winner, and taking over the white jersey as best young rider from IAM Cycling’s Matteo Pelucchi.

Team director José Azevedo obviously was happy with that:

“It was also a nice performance from young Bob Jungels. He took sixth in his second race as a pro rider and Ben King took 16th. I am optimistic for the rest of the race. Saturday’s finish on Mont Faron and Sunday’s stage will be decisive. We will try to win the overall with Maxime.”

 

Monfort himself was optimistic about his overall chances and said “we will give it a try of course. There are guys like Roux and Roy who are maybe better climbers, but I will go for it!”

 

Stage 3 set to begin in Marseille and end in Saint Remy de Provence has been cancelled with race organizers citing "unsatisfactory security conditions" as the reason for the cancellation.