Tour de France roundup: Dumoulin, Sagan, Majka, Porte, Bardet, Nibali, Froome, Thomas
Jul 10 2018 04:12 am CET
Tour de France
The third stage of the Tour de France was a Team Time Trial in which BMC Racing Team took the victory and put the Yellow Jersey on Greg Van Avermaet's shoulders. Here are some more reactions from the riders after the stage.
Tom Dumoulin:
"Technically everything went perfectly. Eventually, we were very close to the victory and we could not wish for more outside of the win. We knew that a win would be very difficult and we are very proud of the result. I’m happy about the GC consequences. In a TTT you really have to go for it with all of us as a team, it went so fast and we had small differences in the turns. With very good formation and a plan, we did a very good job."
Peter Sagan:
"I had bad legs today, from the start. It was really hot and I also lost my bottle on a bump, just 400 meters into the race. I gave my best, as I always do, but I also suffered a lot to respect the coveted yellow jersey I had. I wish I could have contributed a little bit more to Rafal's GC quest today but this is the way it is in sports. You have good days, you have difficult days. Tomorrow we'll have another chance and, once again, we will give it our all."
Rafal Majka:
"It was a tough day out there and we all suffered a lot. My legs felt really good and I could push a lot but we never found the right rhythm today, so we lost a few more seconds than we would have liked. The position I find myself in the GC now is still fine, and there are still a lot of tricky stages ahead of us where we can gain back some time."
Richie Porte:
"I think after what happened on the first stage, throwing 51 seconds away, it was good to take back time on some of the other GC guys. I think the guys were really impressive today. They did a really good job. It's hard to pinpoint one of the guys but when you have someone like Stefan Küng, it makes it a little easier."
Romain Bardet:
"We did a good time trial. The team fought as one man in order to post a good time, because you have to have all eight involved. I take my hat off to the guys who had to drop off 10 kilometres from the finish, like Axel Domont and Silvan Dillier; they gave 100% of themselves. Tony Gallopin did a huge amount of work despite his broken rib, and Pierre Latour was very impressive. He is the best French rouleur for sure."
Vincenzo Nibali:
"We are not great TTT specialists and in the last kilometres I stayed with only 3 teammates: Ion and Gorka Izagirre and Domenico Pozzovivo and so we tried to contain the gap. We are only at the beginning of the Tour and the most important thing is that I feel good. We will see day by day how the race will evolve."
Chris Froome:
"Just going off feeling and how we rode that I think we can be pretty happy. I think we gave it everything we had and it went pretty much all to plan. You can never tell who is going to be on a good day and who is not. I think all in all it worked out really well for us."
Geraint Thomas:
"There’s a few things [to improve], you always think you can go a little bit quicker, but I think we rode it really well technically and communicated well," said the rider to British broadcaster ITV. "We knew we could afford to lose two riders, Wout and Luke, but there was no set plan to do it, just to commit if they didn’t feel great and go as far as they could and that’s what they did."
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