After doing well in a hilly time trial in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, Adam Yates is hoping to get his Criterium du Dauphine challenge off to the best possible start by winning the short 3.9km prologue tomorrow, which averages 9.7%.

He told skysports.com: "I'm pretty excited about the time trial in the Dauphine. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into that and seeing what I can do. I've been working on my time-trialling. Everyone knows how important it is. You can win or lose a race on a time trial, so it's an area I've been trying to improve. I haven't done anything outrageous, but I spend a lot of time on the TT bike."

Yates, 23, is using the Dauphine as the final tune up before he rides the Tour de France, his big goal for the season. His Orica-GreenEDGE team will once more ask him to try and win stages rather than target the GC in the Grand Tour. However, Yates says he will try and get as high up the GC if he can, as the route suits him.

"The Tour is the main goal of the season and we are going to go in with a similar plan, which is going for stages," Yates said. "This year looks a lot hillier than last year, which suits me much more. I wouldn't say I will target GC, but this Tour is a lot easier for me to get up there in the GC. If I have a bit of luck and don't get caught up in any crashes, we can see. A lot of guys in the best young rider classification have moved up, so there is potentially an opportunity for me there as well to spend a couple of days in the white jersey."