Defending Tour champion Vincenzo Nibali lost 10 seconds on the other favorites in today's finale and admitted he had a bad day.

"It was a bad day and I didn’t expect that at the beginning of the stage," he said. "In the finale, I didn't have good sensations. At the start of the stage, I was OK but when the accelerations took place, I was unable to react. It was a bad day.

"I don’t know how the team time trial will go, but it will certainly the first real place where we can draw up a first balance sheet for the Tour – which, for me, so far, has not been good."

His Astana team director Giuseppe Martinelli wrens that the Italian champion could not afford to lose anymore time.

"I can't understand what happened. We must believe it was bad day, otherwise this Tour is going to be complicated. We cannot afford any other mistakes.

"I wouldn’t have expected Vincenzo to lose 10 seconds this morning. He never said anything to make us think that he wasn’t feeling good. We saw in the finale that our riders brought him, and so we thought that everything was going as expected because there were only around 25 riders left at that point."