20-year-old Valerio Conti may be the youngest rider in the Criterium du Dauphiné but the youngster is performing excellently in his first WorldTour race. Today he again finished with the main favourites to roll across the line in 20th.

Valerio Conti is just 20 years of age and riding his first professional season with Lampre-Merida but he is already mixing it up with the WorldTour stars in the Criterium du Dauphiné. In the first mountain stage, he finished 29th, less than 3 minutes behind Chris Froome, and today he finished with the best riders in the hard stage to Gap.

The youngster is now sitting in 28th overall in a race where Lampre-Merida have otherwise played an anonymous role. Team captain Damiano Cunego is far from his best form and instead it has been Kristijan Durasek who has taken over the captaincy role.

Today the team missed the decisive breakaway but Durasek showed the colours when he made an unsuccessul attempt to gain some time by attacking on the final climb of the Col de Manse. Sports director Bruno Vicino hopes to see more from his climbers Conti and Durasek in the upcoming stages.

"Conti and Durasek are strong on the climbs," he said. "It would have been interesting to see Valerio in the breakaway from which Trofimov took the win. Unfortunately, we had no one there. It was a good work by Durasek although his attempt was not successful."