For the second day in a row, Jurgen Roelandts (Lotto Belisol) finished on the podium in the Tour of Qatar but in today's sprint he was no match to Tom Boonen (Omega Pharma-Quick Step). Admitting that Boonen and race leader Niki Terpstra are exceptionally strong, he admits that it will be hard to improve on his current 2nd place in the overall standings.

After two days of the Tour of Qatar, Omega Pharma-Quick Step has certainly been the dominant team but the most consistent rider has actually been one from their Belgian rivals, Lotto Belisol. While in Qatar to prepare for the cobbled classics, Jurgen Roelandts has shown excellent condition by finishing on the podium twice in a row.

Yesterday he was part of the very strong breakaway that kept a hard-chasing peloton at bay but in the end he had no match to Niki Terpstra's brute force and had to settle for 2nd. Today he made the front group with teammate Marcel Sieberg in the crosswind drama and despite being led perfectly out by Sieberg, he had to settle for 3rd behind Tom Boonen and Michael Mørkøv (Tinkoff-Saxo).

By scoring 4 bonus seconds at the finish and another 3 for winning the final intermediate sprint, he reduced his deficit on GC to Terpstra to 5 seconds. He is still 2nd overall but admits that it will be hard to beat Omega Pharma-Quick Step as Boonen and Terpstra are in excellent condition.

"Terpstra and Boonen are both in really good shape, like the whole QuickStep team actually," he told Cyclingnews at the finish. "You could really feel it when they did their turns on the front, they were producing a lot of power."

Roelandts is not known as a time trial specialist but he expects to put in a good performance in tomorrow's 10.9km race against the clock.

"I’m ok in a TT but we’ll see."

Lotto Belisol had their star sprinter André Greipel miss out in the selection, with the German being left in the second group. With teammate Lars Bak, he tried hard to get back but they never made the junction.

"We couldn’t wait," Roelandts said. "We weren’t riding on the front. If they came back, then they came back, and we were just saving the energy for the final. But they didn’t come back, so in the end, it was up to us to try and win the stage."

Starting at 12.45 CET you can follow the time trial on CyclingQuotes.com/live. You can read our preview here.