After his strong Giro, Maxime Monfort was hoping to do the Tour de France, but Lotto Soudal has decided to line up the 32-year-old Waal in the Tour of Switzerland (June 13-21). "That means no Tour," Monfort tweeted. "I'm disappointed, but understand the decision of the team, which goes for Greipel in the Tour. And they do not want me to work for him."

Monfort finished eleventh in the Giro, one place better than fellow team leader Jurgen Van den Broeck. The pair will both do the Vuelta this year.

Last year Monfort also missed the French race. In 2012 (15th) and 2013 (14th), he finished in the top 15 but he won't be allowed to repeat those performances.

Team manager Frederik Willems and manager Marc Sergeant called him to giver their explanations.

"Both told me they were satisfied with my Giro," he told Dhnet.be. "They added that if I combined the Giro and the Tour, my season would probably end there and they would be unable to use me for the rest of the year.

"Furthermore, they want to have guys around Greipel and they don't want me to ride in front of the peloton. And they also want to avoid the criticism that would come if something happened to me in the first week and they didn't wait for me.

"Finally, they asked me to go to the Tour of Switzerland to score WorldTour point. I'm still tired from the Giro so it will not be easy to score points there."

The road to the Vuelta for Monfort goes through the national championships.

"Then there's an altitude training with the team and also one for myself. Last year I found the combination of the Tour de Wallonie and the Tour of Poland difficult, so now I will only do Poland before I go to Spain."