Joe Dombrowski is now in Argentina to race the Tour de San Luis. This Wednesday, the Cannondale-Garmin rider finished in 17th place, 1 minute and 10 seconds down on stage winner Dani Diaz (Funvic Sao Jose dos Campos). A good performance for the American who he knew a difficult 2014 season.

“Everyone calls this a preparation race but it’s pretty full on. The first uphill finish wasn’t super long so it was pretty explosive and you could see that everyone is in different places,” Dombrowski told Cyclingnews. “For a lot of the South American guys it’s the middle of the summer for them and they’re used to the heat and all that, so they fared pretty well. Then the rest of us were kind of scattered about.”

In 2014, he suffered of an iliac artery problem. “I’ve heard people say that and I guess in my case specifically, I only did a couple of races and I had a pretty big operation and I was out for most of the year, so no matter where I would have been I was out of racing,” Dombrowski said. “In terms of GC riding, they’re probably the best in the world and they’ve got some of the best GC riders in the world so if you’re that sort of rider and you’re a young guy, it may be difficult for you to show what you can do.”

“That said, I feel like I had some good opportunities there and I wouldn’t say I regret my time there. They have a really impressive infrastructure in terms of rider support and I think compared to other teams, they’re the only team like that in cycling. I learned a lot from that and I’ll take that forward.”

About the next, he thinks that he will race a grand tour, but he doesn’t know which one. “I think it would be more likely the Vuelta than the Tour but honestly I haven’t really heard,” he said. “The programme is only decided up until about June because by then guys get sick or hurt or whatever and everything gets changed around.”

Now, Dombrowski is 16th at the overall classification with 4 minutes and 39 seconds delay with Daniel Diaz, the first.