One week after finishing third in the USA Pro Challenge, Sergei Tvetcov (Jelly Belly) again mixed it up with the WorldTour riders when he finished second in the Tour of Alberta prologue. The Romanian was one of a select few to use a time trial bike on the hilly course and the choice paid off for the Jelly Belly captain who is now in a good position for another podium spot in a major race.

Already last year Sergei Tvetcov indicated that he was a big talent for the future but this year he has stepped up his level a further notch. Having already finished in the top 10 of the Tour of Utah, he took a breakthrough third in the USA Pro Challenge one week ago.

However, Tvetcov is not resting on his laurels or too focused on responding to all the attention from the WorldTour teams. Yesterday he put himself in a good position to take another top result when he finished second in the Tour of Alberta prologue.

Losing 14 seconds on the hilly 4km course, Tvetcov was far off the mark of stage winner Tom Dumoulin but his time was three seconds better than the one of third-placed Tom Danielson in a race where the gaps were very small. Like Dumoulin, Tvetcov made the right choice by using his TT bike despite the stage ending with a very tough climb.

“After the press conference yesterday I rode [the course] first on the time trial bike, and I questioned from yesterday until today which bike I would ride,” he said. “So at the last minute I decided to just go with the time trial bike because I realized that was not going to be a big advantage to use the normal bike. It was a pretty hard course, and my lungs still hurt.”