Cannondale-Garmin rider Andrew Talansky looks on course to match or better his Tour de France result of 2013, where he was tenth. He is sitting 19th, 2:07 behind Chris Froome with the mountains just around the corner.

“It’s nine days in and we’ve still got eight of our guys left,” he said. “Everybody is healthy, everybody is strong. We spent today on the front but there are other teams that have been doing that for seven days in a row. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and we’re going to give it our best effort and whatever that ends up being it will be and then we’ll head up into the mountains,” he told Cyclingnews ahead of today’s team time trial.

He says that his time loss so far isn’t too worrying considering the stages didn’t suit him and he wasn’t trying to follow other wheels and put himself in the red.

“Days like Mur de Huy and days like today are all about managing and getting to the finish line as fast as possible and not really concerning myself with what other people are doing,” explained Talansky. “I guarantee in Paris the guy in front of me will be a few minutes in front and the person behind will be a few minutes behind. I think for the most part it will be the same for everybody inside the top 10 or the top five.”