After ending up 5th and winning the best young rider's jersey last, Tejay Van Garderen (BMC) has entered this year's Paris-Nice with the clear goal of securing the first overall stage race victory of his career. Known as a strong time triallist, he was disappointed by his performance in the opening prologue yesterday where he ended up 59th.

A number of strong performances during stage races last year have marked Tejay Van Garderen out as one of the hottest prospects for future grand tour glory. However, he still has to win his first stage race, and he is determined that this year's edition of Paris-Nice should get him off the mark.

With his main strength in the race against the clock, Van Garderen looked to use the 2,9 km opening prologue to get a head start on some of his rivals. With a disappointing 59th place 11 seconds behind winner Damien Gaudin (Team Europcar), the outcome was not as he had wished. Instead of being ahead, he now needs to gain time on key rivals like Robert Gesink (Blanco), Rui Costa (Movistar), Lieuwe Westra (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Sylvain Chavanel (OmegaPharme-QuickStep).

Unsurprisingly, he was unimpressed by his own performance.

" "Prologues are a funny thing," he said after the race. "Sometimes you have a good one, sometimes you have a bad one. I'm glad it wasn't a complete disaster, but I would have liked to have done better.

Being just 2,9 km long, the prologue was, however, not expected to make big time gaps, and even if Van Garderen lost out, his deficit is limited. He pointed out that the main challenges are still to come.

"There's a long ways until we get to Nice and this is a handful of seconds," he continued. "Some big time will be lost in the up coming stages."

Gilbert: I expected more from myself

Teammate Philippe Gilbert has been encouraged by his early-season condition, and he seems to be much better than at the same time last year. With the short, technical course suited to his characteristics, the world road race champion had looked to impress in the opening time trial.

However, he also ended up disappointed after the race.

 "It was a nice course for me, but I was safe in the corners," he said. "I was actually expecting more from myself."

With the race primarily used as build-up towards the classics, Gilbert had targeted the prologue as his main possibility for personal glory. He is well aware that he has a very specific job in the coming days even if he not completely excludes the possibility of a personal result.

"The most important thing is to protect Tejay from surprises with the wind in the next days and to get him to the bottom of climbs in the best position," he said. "Then we see if there is an opportunity for a breakaway in the last days or maybe a sprint from a small bunch where I maybe have a chance. But the most important point is to protect Tejay."

Gilbert will take on that job today on the 195 km first stage which is almost completely flat. With limited wind predicted, a bunch sprint is expected where BMC will probably look to new signing Daniel Oss for a result.