Manuele Boaro (Team Saxo-Tinkoff) came tantalizingly close to his first professional victory in yesterday's time trial in the Criterium International. He ended up just 1 second behind stage winner Richie Porte (Sky) to end up 2nd and hailed the performance as his best ever.

Manuele Boaro has long been regarded as a very talented time triallist. He has been in the mix a number of times - especially in shorter races against the clock - but so far victory has eluded.

Yesterday's second place was another near-miss to add to a ling containing a 4th in last year's Giro prologue, a 2nd in the time trial of last year's Circuit Cycliste Sarthe and a 2nd in the 2011 Italian TT championships. However, the young Italian feels a marked improvement and sees the result as his best ever.

"Once the first feeling of disappointment of not winning has subsided, I'm very happy about my perhaps best result ever," he said. "It is a great achievement for me and it provides me with hope for greater achievements in the future."

Boaro is not known as a strong climber, and even though he heads into today's summit finish on the Col de l'Ospedale in 2nd overall, he knows that it will be difficult to go for a final GC result.

"Tomorrow (today, ed.), I will of course try to hang on to the overall favourites but it is a difficult and hilly stage, and it's going to be hard to maintain my position in the GC."

The team was dealt a blow prior to the race as team captain Alberto Contador had to cancel his participation due to a bout of flu. Hence, sports director Philippe Mauduit as happy to see the team bounce back strongly from the disappointment of losing their leader just days before the start.

"Manuele clearly shows that he can compete with the world's best time trial specialists today, and we can, of course, only be happy with that fact but when you are so close to winning, a second place can be rather disappointing," he said. "All in all, it was obviously a good day for us, and our riders get stronger and stronger after a few weeks with illness on the team, so we look forward to the coming weeks."

The team will hope that Michael Rogers (18th overall) and Sergio Paulinho (20th) can go for the GC in today's mountain stage while climber Jesus Hernandez could make his presence felt on the steep slopes towards the end of the race.