The Tour de France is currently taking place in the Alps, and after a rest day, the race will once again hit the mountain stages on Tuesday.

The Dutch pair of Fabio Jacobsen and Dylan Groenewegen won back-to-back stages 2 and 3 in Denmark, the only pure sprint victories in the first nine stages.

Lotto-Soudal sprinter Caleb Yuan, one of the fastest finishers in the peloton, was expected to be in contention for the win, but he was unlucky at the worst possible time.

The Australian would go on to battle through the Alpine stages in 13th and 9th place.

"Obviously we are here to try to win a stage, but we haven't done it yet," Ewan told Cycling News at the start of stage 9 on Sunday morning.

"But I think I've only had two chances to sprint so far. But I think I've only had two chances to sprint so far.

"Next time I'm going to ...... I don't even know when, but I think it's after the rest day. But it's been a pretty hard tour so far."

Ewan, who celebrated his 28th birthday on Monday's rest day, sprinted with a broken derailleur on the second stage, and the next day Wout Van Aert side-stepped Peter Sagan.

As he boarded Lot Soudal's bus, he sounded relatively upbeat despite his misfortune thus far, praising his teammates, including mid-season signee Reinhard Janse van Rensburg, who gathered for him in an unfamiliar lead group.

"It's looking good," he said. 'They're doing a really good job. I've been saying for a while that they're not the guys that are going to bring me to the last 200 meters, but they're the guys that are going to keep me out of trouble for as long as they can and bring me as deep into the final as they can,"

"And they're going to keep me out of trouble for as long as they can and bring me as deep into the final as they can.

"Then they kept me out of trouble for as long as they could and brought me as deep into the final as they could.

"From there on, I'm going to figure it out on my own. But sometimes when you do that, you're obviously going to have bad luck.

"So if my luck had been a little different the first two times, I think I could have won. I think I have the legs to win, so hopefully I can win the next few sprint opportunities."

But with the peloton aiming for three summit finishes in Megeve, the Col de Granon, and L'Alpe d'Huez, thoughts of leading out and sprinting will be driven from Ewan's mind in the coming stages. While Philippe Gilbert, Tim Wellens, and Andreas Krohn will be free to fight for a breakaway or stage win, Ewan and his lead group will switch to survival mode.

"There are some really hard stages coming up, so it's more important to ride within the time limit than to conserve energy.

"I think it's important to finish the race within the time limit," Ewan said, "because that's what we're going to be doing.