With two riders just outside the top 10, it is an open question how Lotto Soudal will approach the final stages of the Giro d'Italia.

Herman Frison works as sports director at the Tour of Belgium but also knows everything about Maxime Monfort's and Jurgen Van den Broeck's possibilities in the Giro.

"Our first goal was to take a stage victory. We succeeded in a brilliant way with André Greipel,. And the second goal was to achieve a good GC result.

"Everybody knew that with Van den Broeck and Monfort we had two candidates for the GC. They are not in the top 10, but maybe they can move up and both get into top the 10.

"It is always a great achievement to finish in the top 10 in a grand tour. Maxime and Jurgen are equally strong, and we can hardly say that one has to ride for the other.

"We will let  both take their own chance and then we will see where they end. In the mountains it is always up to oneself and it is usually just about trying to follow as long as possible."

A notable achievement was the good time trial by Jurgen Van den Broeck. 

"That was a brilliant performance and thus he was able to climb from 11th to 5th place. It's a long time since I have seen him get such a good result. It was a pity that he crashed the next day and had more bad luck."