The 29-year-old Australian cycling star has added to the bulging catalogue of bizarre Tour moments with his departure from the race.

Riders quit mid-stage all the time, but Dennis apparently went missing for a couple of hours after it happened.

And it was the day before he would have started as the rider to beat in the stage 13 individual time trial - Dennis is reigning world champion in the discipline.

It just doesn't make sense.

But Dennis is as mercurial as he is brilliant.

By his own admission, Dennis can also rub people the wrong way and it's something he has had to address.

Dennis spoke about that in an extensive interview posted last month on the Stanley Street Social podcast.

It was Dennis as his best - an hour-long discussion that shows the Australian is one of cycling's great interview subjects.

The hour-long chat, recorded in January, took an astonishing turn at the end when Dennis was asked what advice he would give to an aspiring cyclist.

"To this day, there are times when I think 'what the hell am I doing?'," Dennis said.

"In 2018 I reckon there were half a dozen times when I thought 'I could quit - right now' and January last year was the big one.

"If someone said to me 'Rohan, don't stress - if you quit today I will make sure you never have money issues for the rest of your life' I would have taken it.

"Then I just sort of chugged away. I just snapped out of it."

As the interviewer - himself a former top-level cyclist - could not contain his surprise, Dennis continued.

"I did not want to race my bike ever again. I was over this sport," he said

"But after a while you snap out of it and maybe it's a a bit of a depressed period, for a week or something, then you realise why you like it again.

"I have these little periods when things aren't going well, across the board, sometimes it's a bit tough.

"It's the same with every job ... you're bashing your head against the wall 'what am I doing? what am I doing?'

"Eventually that wall shows a crack and you're 'that's why I'm doing it', but I still go through those periods."

Australian Associated Press