Luke Durbridge (OGE) is about to complete his first Tour de France. He should be on his terrain in today's 54-km time trial between Bergerac and Perigueux.

The Tour is hard on every rider but even more so for the debutants, especially when they don not have a major role to play in the race.

"Sometimes when you're just doing day after day, stress after stress, and you're trying to just avoid crashes… you might prefer to be lying on your couch watching the Tour on tellie,” said Orica-Greenedge time trial specialist Luke Durbridge to letour.fr.

At 23, and while he already took part in the Giro twice, the Australian did not have the easiest Tour debut. He entered an edition with only one time-trial to look forward to. And his team had to do without home sprinter Michael Matthews from the start before losing their leader Simon Gerrans, involved in several crashes. Motivation was the key to continue.

“Everyone goes through the Tour differently.”

“I think it's good to have a mission every day, it might be: ‘Okay, get over the first climb in the front group and then sit up and ride grupetto…' or maybe it's to get Simon Gerrans in the front with 10 kilometres to go.

“It's good to have a mini-goal every single day and I think that keeps me motivated and gets me through every stage.”

And so what are his mini-goals for the days left in his first Tour?

"We'd love to have won two stages and had the yellow jersey… so would every team. Maybe next year that'll be the case but this year it wasn't."

“It's still the Tour de France, we're still here… we're still trying to have a good time trial – myself and Svein – and we're still going to get to Paris. For me that's going to be a victory in itself, that's going to be a really big moment for me.”