While he is looking to take the Yellow Jersey by the end of today’s team time trial at the Tour de France, Tejay van Garderen was trained himself to respond to Chris Froome’s attacks in the mountains to ensure he can keep the jersey.

“I have worked on a few things in training – accelerations, rhythm changes – to try to be more well-rounded to go with those pure climbers,” van Garderen said.

“I was training with some team-mates, we would do some race simulation where they would come from behind and they would attack me and I would have to get on their wheels as fast as I could. And then different things, intervals, looking at your power doing 40 seconds as hard as you can, then recovering for 20 seconds. Then 40 again as hard as you can.”

The BMC rider did this in the winter and then again after the Dauphine, where he lost the led on the final day to Froome. Despite not winning the race, he says the Dauphine gave him huge confidence going into the Tour.

“The Dauphiné raised my confidence; I was able to play on that level. When he was attacking me, normally, he’d be able to ride away and I’d never see him again, but this time it was always 10 or 12 seconds,” Van Garderen added.

“It was narrow margins that I was beaten by, I even got the better of him on Pra Loup. I saw him start to fade. I thought, he’s Froome, he doesn’t fade, so it was a bit surprising when I caught him. I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to beat Chris Froome.’ That’s pretty cool."

“On any given day, I can be right there with him, or that he might not be that far ahead. In a three-week race, if it’s a tug of war like that then anything’s possible.”