Richie Porte took little consolation from recording his second-best Tour de France finish.
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The Launceston 34-year-old slipped out of the top 10 on a "terrible" penultimate stage in the Alps to finish 11th overall, bettered only in his nine Tours by fifth place in 2016.
Porte finished 19th and 23rd in 2013 and '14 respectively but had failed to finish the last two Tours.
"I didn't come here to come 11th, that's no secret, but I think I fought with everything we had and we didn't have great luck but we had a great team here, a good atmosphere and the three weeks went really fast," he said.
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"It's been three years since I made it to Paris so bit of a miracle to get here and it's been a great three weeks.
"The good for me personally would have been the time trial (fifth place), the bad probably the Tourmalet and the ugly was stage 20 (38th place) - I had a terrible day and exploded - but otherwise I think there was probably more good than bad."
Porte was the team leader for Trek-Segafredo which finished second in the teams classification but director Steven de Jongh was not mincing his words.
"With Richie, we wanted to be top 5," he said. "That was the expectation, but we also must not forget that Richie finished his last Grand Tour in 2016, and after that, he always crashed out.
"Coming back and finishing in 11th was not what we expected he'd do, and he's also disappointed in that, but in the end, at least he finished the Tour again. Now he knows again what it is and what he needs to do to be up there and I think that will help him in future Grand Tours."
First stage back
Nathan Earle has completed a 700-kilometre four-stage tour in his first race back from a broken leg.
The Hobart 31-year-old finished Italy's Adriatica Ionica race in 82nd, while helping his Israel Cycling Academy teammate Ben Hermans to overall second place.
Earle broke his leg in a Spanish one-day race in April, prompting him to fly home to Tasmania to recover.
He had begun the year with a fourth place in the Tour de Taiwan.
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