Tony Gallopin (Radioshack) was unable to fulfill his ambition of mixing it up in the final sprint in today's third stage of the Criterium du Dauphiné, the Frenchman having to settle for 13th. Nonetheless, he defended his lead in the young riders' competition but expects to lose his white jersey in tomorrow's time trial.

Tony Gallopin always performs strongly in the Criterium du Dauphiné and this year is no exception. So far the versatile Frenchman has come back strongly from a break from competition by finishing in the top 10 in the first two stages, taking the white jersey for best young rider and moving into 3rd on GC.

Today another sprint was on the cards and once again Gallopin hoped to battle for the win. However, the final climbs proved less difficult than expected and most of the pure sprinters survived the challenges. That made it difficult for the Radioshack rider who is much more of a classics rider than a man for the big bunch sprints and so he had to settle for 13th.

 "Once again today, it was difficult for me to win," he said. "The course was more suitable for pure sprinters like those who finish in front of me: Viviani, Hushovd, Bouhanni..."

However, his performance was good enough to remain best young rider for another day and he will start tomorrow's time trial clad in the white jersey to signal his lead in that competition. The Frenchman is no bad time triallist, having finished 18th in the first long time trial in last year's Tour de France and 6th in the race against the clock in that year's Bayern Rundfahrt.

Despite his credentials in the race against the clock, it will be hard for him to defend his lead as 10 riders have the same overall time as him. Among those are noted specialists like Michal Kwiatkowski and Rohan Dennis and it is very likely that the Frenchman will have to surrender his lead to one of those two riders.

He knows very well that tomorrow could be his last day in the white jersey.

For me, it’s quite nice to hold this jersey," he said. "But there’s a high chance that I lose it tomorrow. It’s not really a goal for me to keep it. I know there’ll be true time trial specialists tomorrow and great climbers later on. I won’t be able to defend the white jersey against them."

The team had actually improve Gallopin's chances in the sprint by forcing a higher pace on the day's final climb. Hence, team rider Laurent Didier went on the attack but it was not enough to see all the pure sprinters drop off.

“The stage was easier than the road book indicated, especially the last climb which was not hard enough to get rid of the sprinters," sports director Alain Gallopin said. "We let Laurent Didier attack on the last climb to have some action and try to make the group smaller.  But the climb wasn’t steep enough and there was a head wind, plus the descent that followed was full gas.  Tony’s training isn’t really done with this type of sprint in mind.  But he was still there in the end and the entire team is feeling good.”

Starting at 11.00 you can follow tomorrow's time trial in its entirety on CyclingQuotes.com/live.