For the second year in a row, Chris Horner is fighting against Tom Danielson for the overall win in the Tour of Utah but yesterday he came up short in the first mountain stage. Still on cold medication, however, the Vuelta champion was content with his third place.

12 months ago the Tour of Utah came down to an exciting duel between Chris Horner and Tom Danielson. When the 2014 edition hit the mountains in yesterday's stage 4, it again came down to a battle between the two American veterans.

Like last year Danielson emerged as the strongest after having dropped Horner 4km from the top of Powder Mountain. The Vuelta champion dropped back to Ben Hermans and finished in 3rd, 57 seconds behind the stage winner.

However, Horner was not too displeased with the results. He came down with illness in the Tour de France and still hasn't recovered completely.

“I didn’t seem to be affected too much by the bronchitis,” Horner said of the respiratory infection he’s been struggling with since the Tour de France. “I could feel it a little bit earlier in the stage. I could feel it a lot yesterday, but maybe there was more smog down there.

"More importantly though, I’m on multiple different cold medications so maybe it has a little affect here or there. Clearly there was good power up the climb today, so I can’t complain much. I’m on the right path to go win the Vuelta again.

"We'll see how the rest of the stages go, of course. Danielson is clearly the best in the race today, and I'm sure he will be in the future stages too. We'll see if there are some tactics that play out, but basically he'd have to get isolated in one of the stages where there's a little bit more advantage sitting on."