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In Bjarne Riis’s absence, Oleg had promoted Stefano Feltrin to general manager. Previously, Feltrin had been the guy looking after the contracts for the riders, sponsors, and such, and he had a very clear vision of how everything should work.

“You’re going to the Tour to work exclusively for Alberto,” Feltrin and Steven de Jongh, Tinkoff’s head DS, told me.

“No, I can’t do that. I have a green jersey to defend and stages to win.”

I couldn’t understand the logic. I was aware that there had been problems in the past in teams that had conflicting objectives, but I didn’t think that applied to me. I talked to Sean Yates, the British guy who was then one of our directeurs sportifs at Tinkoff about the issues he’d been through at Sky when Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins were hunting the green and yellow jerseys respectively. We agreed that this was a different situation, as Mark rides as the spearhead of a team effort and expects assistance, lead-out trains, breaks being chased down, tows back to the main group, dedicated domestiques, all things that are difficult for a team to provide when they are protecting the interests of a genuine G.C. contender or race leader at the same time.