Rohan Dennis headed into yesterday's queen stage of the Tour of California as the biggest rival to Bradley Wiggins but actually the Australian had no plans to attack the race leader. Despite going into the stage with a defensive mindset, however, he went on to win the stage and reduce his deficit to the Sky leader significantly.

After his dominant showing in the time trial, it seemed that only a disaster could prevent Bradley Wiggins from winning the Tour of California overall. After all, his GC rivals were almost all more than one minute back and the Brit has seemed to be at the top of his game.

The only exception was Rohan Dennis who started yesterday's queen stage 41 seconds behind the race leader but even though the young Australian has shown flashes of climbing form in the past, he had never given indications that he would realistically be able to challenge the past Tour de France winner. In fact, Dennis himself headed into the queen stage with a defensive mindset and just wanted to protect his position.

As he got closer to the top of the final climb of Mount Diablo, however, the Australian started to feel good and by the time they reached the final steep 500m he felt ready to give it a go. At that point Wiggins had been tapping along on the front for more than 8km, bringing the group down to just 11 riders, and Dennis knew that he would pay the price.

Dennis made a great acceleration to take an emphatic stage victory and put 20 seconds into Wiggins in less than 500m, thus almost halving his overall deficit.

"The paln was to maintain the difference and not lose any seconds" he said. "That was my personal goal. Last year, at about three kilometers to go, I didn't have anything left. This year, getting past that was a bonus.

"At two kilometers to go, I saw other people cracking around us and that gave me more confidence. We told Janier [Acevedo] to go in the last kilometer and a half to give us that final blow. He accelerated and then Adam Yates went. I decided to go and from then on I think it was just all or nothing.

“I knew after the effort he did, he [Wiggins] wouldn’t be able to punch and win the stage. I was waiting, and hoping the attacks would start at 5K, or 3K to go, actually. But Bradley knew it had to go hard then, to make people think twice.

"He set the tempo for a long time. It was incredible. He had to do so as it is his riding style. It was a fantastic race.

"The guys made sure we had bottles all day.My water was not even hot! They made sure that i did not have to do any work before the last attack.

“It does give me a bit of confidence [for the overall]. But I think, now, that Sky will almost ask us to help out, and tactically that will keep more of their guys for the finishing climbs. It will be harder to isolate Brad from here on out.”