This season Joaquím Rodriguez (Katusha) altered his race itinerary compared to last year (or, indeed, compared to almost his entire career) and elected to focus on the Tour de France as his main objective.

The route of this year’s Grande Boucle, according to the Spaniard’s own judgement, suited him to a T with relatively few flat TT kilometres.

Today the main contenders battled it out among themselves on the first Pyrenean stage in terrain that would seem tailor made for the Katusha leader. However, like the rest of the bunch, the Spaniard was steamrollered by team Sky and Chris Froome, losing more than two minutes on the final 6km as the Sky leader got down to business. Despite taking a beating, Rodriguez wouldn’t throw in the towel.

“It was a very hard stage for the high temperature and the fast pace the group kept all day. I'm a little disappointed about the result because I expected more from myself. But anyways, I'm optimistic about the rest of the race: Paris is still very far and we have to ride so many more kilometres before reaching it.”

Rodriguez finished today’s stage 2’06” down on Froome and trails the Briton by 2’31” overall.