The Tour de France had not visited Orsier-Mellet for more than 30 years, but there was clearly deja vu as Primoš Roglic won Tuesday's stage ahead of a small group of overall contenders.

For most of the climb, Dečuninck-Quick-Step, not Jumbo Visma, was the pacemaker. However, as in the Criterium du Dauphiné three weeks earlier, the Dutch team's top climber, Sepp Kuss, accelerated in the last kilometer.

Despite the relative ease of the climb, the Slovenian was able to pull a two-bike gap on his rivals.

This almost conclusively erased the question of whether Roglic had recovered from his Dauphiné injury, but raised another question: how much damage could he do in the summit finish on Mont Aigual on Thursday?

Roglic was happy to talk about his latest climbing prowess (Deceuninck-QuickStep), which moved him up 12 places in the overall standings to third place, just seven seconds behind race leader Julien Alaphilippe (opens in new tab).

"It was a pretty fast, hard day. But the team did a really good job.

"We didn't get the yellow jersey and we have to accept that.

There was mixed information before the Tour de France about Roglic's basic condition after his crash and abandonment at the Dauphiné. But on Tuesday, that seemed to be a thing of the past, with Roglic saying, "I'm happy to be back on the bike. The second stage, the first mountain stage of the Tour, confirmed that I am already ready."

As for how he sees the rest of the race, especially how he will fight the two-handicap with Jumbo Visma's other GC leader, Tom Dumoulin, Roglic does not feel that the Dutch team's current strategy needs to be changed.

"We need to continue the way we have already started," he insisted. And we both need to stay there as long as possible." Teammate Wout Van Aert did a great deal of spadering on the lower slopes of the Orciere Merette. It's a joy for us to have him on the team."

"I'm just proud because everyone did a great job and I was able to complete it.

When asked if he was surprised that Ineos Grenadiers was not at the summit, he was more circumspect: "Yes and no.

"Surely Ineos will show up later in the race," he insisted, before praising Alaphilippe and Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) as dangerous competitors.

Asked if he was aiming not only for the yellow jersey but also for a stage win, Roglic replied, "Yes, no," before adding that Dečuninck-Quickstep was also looking for a good result.

But in any case, the main news of the day was not whether Roglic was still in yellow, but rather the big climbing statement of intent he made on Tuesday.