Fabian Cancellara (Trek) was unable to live up to his role as favourite in today's 10.9km time trial in the Tour of Qatar. After finishing 4th, 6 seconds behind Michael Hepburn (Orica-GreenEDGE), the Swiss said that he was starting to feel the fatigue of a hard race schedule.

Despite constantly playing down the expectations, Fabian Cancellara was the big favourite in today's time trial in the Tour of Qatar. As it had been the case one week ago in the Dubai Tour, however, the Swiss was unable to live up to predictions and he could only manage 4th.

Cancellara was beaten by Michael Hepburn, Lars Boom (Belkin) and Daniele Bennati (Tinkoff-Saxo) after initially setting the best time at the intermediate point. In the final headwind section, he started to pay for his fast start and he lost 15 seconds to Hepburn in the second half of the course.

Cancellara arrived in Qatar straight from the Dubai Tour and had no rest day in between those two races. He is one of only very few riders to have done both race and he said that fatigue had started to set in.

“I am satisfied with the first kilometers, but the last three kilometers were pretty hard,” he explained after the finish. “I am feeling the race days, this is the seventh straight day, and I think my normal power was missing.”

Jesse Sergent, finishing in 13th position (+19"), was content with his first race against the clock for the new season as he described the conditions of the time trial.

“I felt I had a good effort. It was my first ever TT on a road bike so it was new and different for me. I have felt better and better each day here.  It was a nice course, dead flat, and very windy - especially the last three kilometers, which were all head wind and felt like a little bit false flat, too.  You go from a headwind at the start to a complete U-turn straight into a tailwind, up to 60kmh – that was a strange feeling on the legs.”

After crashing hard yesterday Stijn Devolder rebounded to have a solid ride and felt the crash did not hinder his performance today.

“I did not feel a lot from the crash. I was trying to find a good rhythm and I am happy with my feeling for this time of the year; I had a good cadence from the start so that’s important.  For the rest of this tour we will try to make a good training for the races that are coming next.”

The race will continue with three addtional flat, wide-open and windy courses. Trek Factory Racing, with no sprinter in Qatar, will race hard in the next days to gain valuable training, its eyes on bigger goals ahead.

"10K is a short intensity,” Cancellara continued. “It is not like 160 or 200K. I know where I am at; I believe in the team, I believe in myself. We had bad luck yesterday and sometimes you begin to see negative things from that. But that is sport. As long as we stay healthy, and not crash, that is the most important.

"At this race you must be at the very front, you have to be 100 percent focused and prepared if you want to win. As a team we did not come here with those specific goals. We know what we are doing, we know where we have come from, and what we want to achieve. We are here to begin to grow towards our specific goals later.”                  

Starting at 12.45 CET you can follow tomorrow's stage on CyclingQuotes.com/live. You can read our preview of the windy stage here.