Tejay van Garderen goes into the final week of the Tour de France with an eye on the podium. The American hopes that his great consistency and a solid final time trial will allow him to reach his goal.

Having finished 5th in the race two years ago, Tejay van Garderen is in an excellent position to improve on that performance. With a 54km time trial still to come, the American TT specialist has a great chance to move onto the podium in Paris.

First, however, he needs to get three tricky stages in the Pyrenees. Van Garderen hopes that his consistency will allow him to get to the time trial within shouting distance of the podium.

"I’m just looking for consistency," he told Velonews on the rest day. "Some of these climbers, they’re very explosive, and that’s less my style. If I can stay consistent maybe some of the other guys will weaken a little bit. But no, I’m not looking — obviously if one of my rivals has a bad day I might push the pace a little bit.

"Five minutes is a lot to make up. I don’t think we’ve been racing each other rather than racing him [Nibali], necessarily. It’s just when he attacks, no one has the legs to follow. And then when we start to chase it kind of becomes tactical. Because some people want to pull and try to get it back. And other people are getting a free ride.

"So then it’s like we have to attack each other in order to whittle down the group so we’re not carrying any freeloaders. So it might look tactical, like we’re racing each other back there but really we’re just trying to unload any dead weight that we might not want to pull back up to Nibali to try to catch him.

"Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet, they’re very young. I haven’t seen them too many times in time trials. I don’t think they’re real specialists. I think they could go OK. Valverde and Jean-Christophe Péraud I know are really good time trialers. So I don’t know.

"You can never be satisfied with anything. It’s the Tour de France. You know? You never know how your legs are going to be after three weeks. I just have to get to it and ride as hard as I can.
 

"This is my first grand tour that I’ve done where I’ve been the outright leader. And the guys have been incredible. It’s a huge experience and I’m certainly enjoying it … I’ve kind of grown into it I think. I’ve led the team in many other races. But to do it in a grand tour is something different. It’s three weeks long. But I feel like the other races have given me enough practice.
 

"My goal is obviously to one year win this race. Yeah, that might be a bit lofty of an expectation for this year. But years down the road, I think it’s something I can do."