Team Giant-Shimano had no big goals in today's mountain stage of the Tour de France but that didn't mean that they enjoyed an easy day in the saddle. In fact, the team's best climber Tom Dumoulin claims to never have suffered so much in a race.

The riders of the 101st Tour de France were put through one final battle in the Vosges mountains before they were granted the first pause of the race with the rest day that awaits tomorrow, and a battle is what stage ten turned out to be.

The tenth stage had it all, much as the previous nine days have, with hills, rain, crashes, abandons and a real fight for both the stage and the GC. For Team Giant-Shimano it was a day to focus on survival and energy conservation before taking a well earned day off from racing tomorrow before refocusing on the next goals that lay ahead.

For the Team Giant-Shimano riders an easy day is never that easy when there are several classified climbs to content and a short time cut to beat. That said the team rallied around Kittel and with several of the team together in the grupetto they made sure that there was to be no upsets ahead of the first rest day, eventually finishing 32’29″ down on the stage winner.

Dumoulin said after the stage: “That was really, really, really hard – I’m not sure if I have ever suffered so much in a race before. From the beginning it was almost full gas and it didn’t let up because when [Tony] Martin and [Michal] Kwiatkowski attacked the bunch had to keep riding hard behind to not let the gap go too far.

“We saw how strong Martin was yesterday so I think they were a bit nervous about letting him go. Finally though it is the rest day and we can look forward to an easier day tomorrow. Everyone is different as to what ride they do on a rest day but I prefer to take it fairly easy and not do much intensity, sticking with a short ride to loosen the legs.”

Albert Timmer added: “Yeah, today was really hard. For me it was the first day too that I haven’t felt great so that made it a bit more difficult, together with more rain showers.

“I was just riding my own race today and got dropped just before the feed zone. From there I rode to the finish with a group that was a few minutes ahead of the grupetto but as Marcel was in that group and safely within the limit I could just ride with my group to the end.

“Tomorrow is a very welcome easy day and I will hopefully recover as much as possible.”

Team Giant-Shimano coach Christian Guiberteau also said: “There were no immediate goals today to be in the break and we wanted to make sure that everyone got to the first rest day safely. All the guys got through another hard day with more bad weather unscathed and we can regroup and refocus tomorrow and look ahead to the next goals in the race with some interesting stages before the final week.”