Orica GreeEDGE team will start the team time trial with only six riders. Indeed, it lost Simon Gerrans, who suffered a broken wrist because of a crash during the 3rd stage. Daryl Impey had a broken collarbone and Michael Albasini had a broken arm. They quitted the race after the 4th and 6th stage, respectively.

Michael Matthews, always in competition, soldiered on despite being badly injured and has been struggling at the back of the peloton every day since, often losing contact and currently sitting last overall.

“I don’t think it’s been too hard to reassess our goals with regards the team time trial, especially now with Michael Albasini out,” said White. "We were taking it day by day but realistically now we haven’t got a chance to win the time trial with six riders and with some very key athletes out. It is what it is, we’ve got to move on and regroup and we’ve got to turn it around as well. Other teams have had bad luck as well; it seems to have hit us harder than anyone else but we’ve been in this situation before. We finished with two riders at the end of the Giro last year. We had a little more success at the start of the Giro but it’s certainly not over for us and we’re going to have a lot of opportunities in the future.”

Luke Durbridge, the time trial specialist, told that it will be a difficult stage this Sunday. "With six guys and also one guy hurting, I think it’s definitely going to be hard to compete against a team of nine. We are good at team time trials and we’re definitely going to give it a go but I wouldn’t put us in the favorites."

“It depends on the guys you’ve got. If you remember a couple of years ago [in 2009] Garmin had [Bradley] Wiggins, [Christian] Vande Velde, [Ryder] Hesjedal and five of the strongest time trial guys in the WorldTour and they ran second with five guys.”