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Australian Chris Harper didn’t reach the WorldTour until he was 25, but since then he has developed into a reliable mountain domestique who can stick with the best climbers in smaller stage races. His second season with Jayco-Alula, after three years with Jumbo-Visma, was an unlucky one. The 29-year-old abandoned the Tour de France in the second week with Covid, and then withdrew from the Vuelta a España on stage 11 after featuring in several breaks

Vital statistics

Age: 29

Raised: Melbourne, Australia

Lives: Andorra

Height: 6ft 1in

Rides for: Team Jayco-Alula

Best results: 1st, GC – Tour of Japan (2019); 4th, GC – UAE Tour (2021); 6th, GC – Volta a Catalunya (2024)

A super-hot day on the TT bike with a number of intervals. I started off with 10 sets of four minutes in a big gear and low rpm, and in between a minute riding a high cadence of over 100rpm. Towards the end of the ride, I had two seven-minute intervals which consisted of alternating 40 seconds above TT pace and 80 seconds recovery. It’s so important to ride the TT bike to get comfortable in the positioning. Total riding: 4hr

This high-volume week hammers home just how hard pro riders have to train to be in the mix at the top level. There’s no heroic sprinting or brute force on display here, just the steady grind of long miles at a relatively high intensity. Take his Thursday ride, a six-hour outing, half of it above 280 watts. For most mere mortals, 30 minutes at that power is a stout effort – three hours is imaginable! But such work is bread-and-butter for a rider like Harper, who knows he may be called upon to sit at the head of a race churning out big numbers all day long.

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