In the Tour of the Alps, Jack Haig was arguably the best performer of the day. As such, he never regretted being caught in the last kilometer of the opening stage around Rattenberg.

He was caught and overtaken in the overall battle and 24 seconds behind stage winner and first race leader Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers), but he was in good shape for this week with the Austrian and Italian Alps and especially the Giro d'Italia so close! He was happy to show it.

"I'm super happy with my performance. It's only my second day off the high altitude and you never know how your body is going to react," Haig told Cycling News after the finish.

"I came here to race aggressive. I thought today was my chance to try something, but I came up 800 meters short."

Ineos Grenadiers set a furious pace on the steep climb up the Kerschbaumer Sattel with 17km to go.

He was joined by Jefferson Cepada (EF Education-Easy Post), who again completed most of the descent and the final climb to the finish in Alpbach alone.

"I knew that if Ineos had all the numbers on the climb and if no one else did anything, we would get to the valley and they would run a hard tempo to the line and finish 1-2-3-4," explained Hague.

"I tried to mix it up a little bit. I was hoping that a few more people would come with me and that at the top of the climb there would be three or four.

Hage pushed alone on the road to Alpbach, testing Ineos Grenadier's depth to the limit.

Geraint Thomas took a big turn along the valley road and Geoghegan Hart, with a well-timed last ditch effort, caught up to and passed Hugh Kersee just ahead of the finish line.

Hague lost 24 seconds, but is confident that more aggressive racing will change GC in the next four mountain stages.

"I'll keep attacking every day," he said. But we will race aggressively. This is just the start."