With his loose hairstyle and well-groomed mustache, Sam Welsford stood out from the crowd of short-haired sprinters at the Tour de France.

"I shaved it off after the Classics season, but I thought, 'I'll do it again for the Tour. ' [Marco Haller (Bora-Hansgrohe) also wears a 'mo,' you know? ' It's something different. Every cyclist looks the same.

Styling, however, is not the only difference in this Australian sprinter's Tour.

Welsford is an Olympian and represented Australia in Rio at the 2016 Tokyo Games.

After the Tour, the 27-year-old will compete in the UCI Track World Championships in Scotland in August.

"It's the only thing I don't have," Welsford told Tour de France Cycling News. 'I've got the silver medal [in Rio] and the bronze medal [in Tokyo], so I'm still chasing the gold. Maybe Paris will be it."

Welsford's experience on the track has served him well at the Tour.

"From the Olympics I learn to deal with the pressure of big competitions. You learn to treat it like any other race."

"Yes, the Tour de France is the pinnacle of road racing, but you're competing against the same riders all year round.

And he believes the race, which gives him another shot at line honors on Wednesday's 11th stage from Clermont-Ferrand to Moulin, will also help him achieve his goals on the track.

"I have ambitions to compete in the world championships right after the Tour," he said.

"Hopefully after the Tour, with my fatigue and my physical condition, I still have ambitions for the Olympics in Paris next year, so I definitely want to compete in Team Pursuit again. Team Pursuit is my main event, and if I can add a bunch race to that, I can have a race like the Omnium. I've had speed and power in the last few years, but I think what I need now in the race is endurance."

Welsford, who is rumored to be moving to Bora-Hansgrohe in 2024, however, is immediately focused on the Tour, where dsm-Filmenig is devoting resources to the Australian and French climber Romain Bardet.

The Commonwealth Games track gold medalist has finished 13th in two of the three bunch sprints that have been dominated so far by Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Desseuninck), his team including three compatriots and former Paris-Roubaix winner John Degenkolb, He is refining his leadout in the stacked group.

"I'm getting tired, I feel it a little bit every morning when I wake up, stage 11 is a good day, I've got a lot of work to do, I've got a lot to do, I've got a lot to do. Hopefully we can get back up there in the sprints.

"I think we're moving in the right direction as a team and we're improving our lead-out and teamwork as the stages go by.

"If we don't have a good leadout here, we won't be able to move up. That means it's very difficult to hold the lead in the last 20km.

"I have the speed, but it's important to learn the experience of sprinting at the World Tour level."

Welsford won three races, including two stages, at the Vuelta a San Juan in January ahead of Fabio Jacobsen (Soudal-Quickstep) and others, and finished second behind Philipsen at the Scheldeprij in April.

Although accustomed to competing in the global spotlight, he faces challenges unique to the Tour, such as the human tunnel, where spectators along the roadside pass in single file, and the group gallop, which is filled with deafening sounds. Welsford estimates that in his first experience of a group sprint at the Tour, he was involved in nearly 20 crashes in the last 10 km.

"It's hard to hear the fans because it's so loud," said Uelsford. Even with the [race] radio, it's so loud and so fast that we can't hear each other. It's so fast that there's no time or opportunity to look around and see where the teams are.