Alberto Contador tried to save energy in today's stage 9 of the Tour de France as he goes into one of the hardest stages tomorrow. The Spaniard does nothing to hide his intention to attack as he needs to use every opportunity to gain time on Vincenzo Nibali.

Tinkoff-Saxo and team captain Alberto Contador finished today’s stage to Mulhouse together with the peloton and the overall GC-favorites. Even though the stage didn’t feature any attacks from the top contenders, rain, wind and many vertical meters made it very demanding before tomorrow’s real mountain stage.

”Today, was again very hard with an high average speed  and 3,000 vertical meters climbed. So it wasn’t a stage that allowed us to take it easy and prepare for tomorrow”, says Alberto Contador after the stage and continues:

"Astana have shown that they have a strong team also for the mountains and now we have to recover and prepare for tomorrow. It’s not important that Nibali and Astana gave away the jersey today. They would have spent a lot of important energy to keep the jersey – energy they will need tomorrow.

“It was a harder day than expected due to the heavy rain and of course the terrain and I’m hoping to recover overnight for tomorrow’s big mountain battle. Astana let go of the jersey so they don’t have to lead the pack but there are other riders to pay attention to besides Nibali. I think Valverde and Porte are looking strong but it will be revealed tomorrow,”

Tomorrow’s stage 9 presents the riders with the first real mountain stage of Tour de France 2014. Tinkoff-Saxo and Alberto Contador has already declared that the time gap to Nibali must be decreased as soon as the opportunity arises.

“It depends on how we recovery today, because it has been a really hard day. I saw that many of my rivals are fine but tomorrow we’ll face real climbs. We will definitely have the chance to see, who we will compete against for the podium in Paris. I’ll have to try to reduce the differences to the riders ahead because they are very strong and although it seems as if there’s still a long way to go, we can’t afford to wait and see”, concludes Alberto Contador.

“We put Sergio [Paulinho] in today’s breakaway of tactical reasons," sports director Philippe Mauduit said. "If an unexpected attack should be launched on us, we would have him in the front to support Alberto.  Although the pace in the peloton wasn’t sky high, it was a pretty nasty stage because of the vicious terrain and considering the landscape only makes Tony Martin’s solo win that more impressive.

"Our plan for today was to save as much energy as possible for tomorrow, which will be another crucial stage in this year’s Tour and we’re probably going to see some changes in the GC."