Alberto Contador (Tinkoff) has had two days to recover from his crashes but Wednesday's Tour de France stage from Limoges to Le Lioran will provide a stern examination of the Spaniard's true GC credentials in this year's race.
The two-time Tour winner fell twice in consecutive stages at the race and lost 48 seconds to his main overall rivals on the first uphill finish on stage 2. If anything, stage 5 is even tougher, and the likes of Chris Froome (Team Sky) and Nairo Quintana(Movistar) will not hesitate to put Contador further onto the back foot.
At the finish of stage 4 Contador's entourage were keen to stress that their man was starting to find his feet in this year's race and that his wounds, although superficial, were starting to heal.
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"He's fighter and he's a legend," Ivan Basso, the technical director for team, said at the finish of stage 4.
"He knows what to do. First priority is that he keeps on recovering. Of course these two stages have helped a bit and we'll cross our fingers. It's still a very long Tour."
"He won the Giro last year after he had a bad crash and injured his shoulder. That's cycling and you have to accept it. Everyone in the team believes that he can win the Tour but at the moment we have to just help him recover. He's had very bad luck but we'll fight that bad luck."
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