"I'm not the same as I was last year. I'm doing well, but not well enough."

Those were the words of Vincenzo Nibali after stage ten at the Tour de France. Nibali, along with other favorites, lost time on the first mountain stage of the 2015 Tour de France on a hot day in the Pyrenees mountains near the border with Spain, finishing 4:25 behind stage winner Chris Froome of Great Britain.

Overall Nibali climbed from thirteenth to tenth but now sits 6:57 behind Froome on General Classification with 11 more stages to race.

Tuesday's stage came on Bastille Day, the French national holiday, and hundreds of thousands of fans lined the country roads and mountain side for the stage's lone 15km climb to the finish. Nibali arrived at the base of the climb together with his teammates, but struggled with the first accelerations and lost contact with the leaders at around 9km to go.

“It was a difficult day," he said. "I couldn't keep the pace. I could not breathe properly. I couldn't find the right pedalling pace. It was as if I didn't have any strength left. I could hardly follow my own team-mates. I tried to pace my effort, but I dropped after four kilometres and decided to climb more gradually.

"For sure Chris Froome hammered us badly. But we all lost time, all the favourites did: Van Garderen, Rodriguez, even Contador. We all thought we were better. It's going to be difficult now.

“I don’t know myself. It’s useless for me to stand here now and speculate on what went wrong. It was a day like that, I have to accept it and analyse it. Physically I’m well but I couldn’t give any more today. I'm not the same Vincenzo Nibali as last year."

“I don’t want anyone to think that Vincenzo came to Tour without being in good condition,” directeur sportif Giuseppe Martinelli said. “That’s not the case, because otherwise there wouldn’t be so many other riders in the same position. We saw some important collapses today: Contador, Rodriguez and many others. And I wouldn’t think they’ve come to the Tour badly prepared either.

“Think back to the first time trial, when Vincenzo beat Froome and almost all of the contenders for the overall, so I think something went wrong when he lost the minute and a half in Holland and when he fell."

Teammate Lars Boom did not start stage ten following a fever and illness that began on Sunday before Monday's scheduled rest day.