Even if LottoNL Jumbo has a strong team at the Tour de France, Robert Gesink stays the best placed overall. This morning, the Dutch rider is 13th, with 1:39 behind Christopher Froome (Team Sky). Gesink has had a rocky relationship with the July race. Indeed, in 2010, he finished 4th overall. The next year, he crashed on stage 5 and finished well out of contention. He recovered from a severe leg break at the end of 2011 to return to the Tour in 2012, only to crash out on stage 6. In 2013 he was 26th after targeting the Giro d'Italia, and last year was diagnosed with hearth rhythm problems that required surgery.

“The Mur de Bretagne is another spectacular moment," he said. "In a way it’s important, but on the other hand it’s unimportant because it’s not a real col. It’s another checkpoint for which you have to be ready, just like every other day. I did it once before when Evans won. I’ll take a look at it tonight. It’s not to be compared with Huy.“

“The mission is simple: going as fast as you can to the top and hoping that the others can’t do it that well," Gesink said. "That’s how you ride a general classification, it’s not all that spectacular,” Gesink said. “In this field one can hope to get the win but it’s not what I expect. I just hope to ride top 10 in Paris. Anything that lays in between I grab along.”

Wilco Kelderman, the second leader, crashed and lost more than 28 minutes. “I hope Wilco is recovering well because he’s a very important part of our team," Gesink said. "He’s super strong. We’ve seen the 15km time trial in Utrecht and we were all super. We can have the ambition of clocking a good time. Everybody has to be healthy of course, but that’s the same for every team. QuickStep lost their big engine, same for Giant, Trek. There are many teams who are more severely wounded than us."

The next goal: doing a great team time trial this Sunday. “Astana, Movistar, BMC still have their teams on the rails, but they’ve worked a lot during the previous stages so they might be tired," he said. "Before this Tour de France nobody would’ve noted LottoNL-Jumbo down as a possible winner of the team time trial. We’re very motivated to do well in it. It’s really a topic in our team. We will try to gain time on my rivals.”