Pierre Rolland's Giro: If only he could time-trial

A rest day today and how they need it given the past couple of stages. Uran comes into it with the Pink jersey on his shoulders and while he's look a little vulnerable on the climbs he has limited his losses to mere seconds which he will accept having taken minutes out of everyone else in the individual time-trial.

One man who has looked good on the climbs and if not a contender for the GC due to his 4 minutes, 47 defect to Uran, then certainly a stage winner, is Frenchman Pierre Rolland, who is looking every bit the rider the French thought they had found when he won that stage to L'Alpe d'Huez in the 2011 Tour de France and finished 10th overall and 1st in the young rider classification.

So how come Rolland is facing such a gap to Uran if he's climbing so strong? He never lost any time to him in any of the crashes earlier on the Giro, always finishing in groups with the Colombian. Well, the answer lies against the clock.

In the team-time-trial to start this Giro back in Belfast Rolland's Europcar team had a nightmare ride and the Frenchman lost a whopping 1 minute, 43 seconds. As I said back then, you cannot win the Giro on an opening stage team-time-trial, but you sure can lose it and it looked right away as though that time loss would be problematic to Rolland.

For all his climbing ability, Rolland has never been strong against the clock. He reminds me of a certain Richard Virenque in that regard -- and only that regard, thankfully. Able to soar in the mountains and always willing to go off the front in search of a stage win or mountains classification points, but too weak against the clock to ever win a Grand Tour.

And so it is in this Giro for Rolland. On stage 8 he lost 16 seconds to Uran when his aggressive climbing caught up with him just before the line, but it was the individual time-trial were his Giro aspirations likely vanished when Uran took a devastating 3 minutes and 46 seconds out of him. That left him 5-45 behind Uran on GC and essentially left looking for stage victories.

On stages 14 and 15 he went about trying to do just that, getting in on the attack early and then riding with Ryder Hesjedal one day and Nairo Quintana the next after they had bridged across to him. Neither resulted in a stage victory -- often the early break had gone far enough ahead to leave any gap impossible to close -- but it did chip away a little at Uran's lead. 38 seconds on stage 14 and 20 seconds on stage 15. Just under a single minute all in; still 4-47 behind with just four big mountain stages to go. Rolland is going to have to hope Uran falls apart in this final week but that would still leave six very good riders ahead of him to overcome to have any hope of winning this Giro.

It's extremely unlikely, though I do admire his willingness to keep trying and I hope he wins a stage for it. No doubt French cycling fans everywhere are hoping that if only he could improve his time-trialing just a little he might one day contend to become the first French Grand Tour winner since Laurent Jalabert at the Vuelta in 1995, and before that Bernard Hinault at the Tour de France in 1985.