Chris Froome dealt with another hard mountain test on stage 19 at the Tour de France to happily hold on to the yellow jersey.

The 28-year-old once again enjoyed the support of his Team Sky team-mates on a lengthy 204.5-kilometre jaunt through the Alps which featured five categorised climbs.

After coming through the stage and a tricky run-in Froome admitted: "There was definitely a sigh of relief after today’s stage. This was one of the stages I was most worried about, on paper it was one of the stages with the most climbing on it. With the weather the way it was, there was a lot of potential for things to get out of hand. I’m glad that stage is behind us now and I’m just thankful for my team-mates for getting me this far today – they did a huge job," Froome said on the official Sky team website.

Even though the anticipated assaults came to naught, Froome added: "I was ready for anything today, especially after the way the Tour has gone so far. The guys did take it up and attack on that final climb and they did go pretty quickly down the other side of it in the rain, so I’m pretty glad to have today out of the way. I don’t want to get complacent at this stage. Tomorrow is only 125km but it’s still one more day to get out of the way before relaxing and heading into Paris."