Svein Tuft finished second behind Sylvain Chavanel in the Tour du Poitou-Charentes but was a massive 44 seconds behind stage winner Sylvain Chavanel. His Orica-GreenEDGE team admits that there was nothing to be done against the French champion and that it will be hard to win the race overall.

Canadian time trial and road race champion Svein Tuft has moved into second position overall on the penultimate day of the Tour du Poitou-Charentes.

Tuft finished second in the stage four individual time trial this afternoon to move him from 49th on bunch time, to the podium position.

Sylvain Chavanel (IAM) won the 23.4km race against the clock to take the overall lead by 47seconds heading into the final day of racing.

“We were really happy with Svein’s ride,” sport director David McPartland said.

“He has been riding strong all week and he is one of the guys who works so hard for the team so it’s nice for him to be able to ride for himself.

“He gave 100%, he hasn’t left anything on the road so he can be happy with the result."

McPartland conceded that is was going to be difficult to challenge for the overall win on tomorrow’s final stage.

“Being realistic about it, it’s going to be difficult to get the lead off Chavanel,” he said.

“He has got a good team here and they have been strong all week.

“We will sit quiet and wait to see how it unfolds. For sure we will get amongst it at some point in the race and hopefully take them by surprise a little bit.”

The penultimate day of racing presented a double stage with Leigh Howard managing 12th position on the stage three road race earlier in the day.

“There were two objectives for this morning’s road stage,” McPartland said.

“The first to try to keep the time trial guys out of trouble and give them the easiest ride possible and the second to try and get Leigh up for a good stage result.

“It was a messy and dangerous finish and with us trying to keep our time trial guys fresh, safe and out of trouble we couldn’t provide the same level of support as the previous couple of days and it left Leigh to fend for himself a bit.”