Robert Hunter - "I've had a successful race..."

“For six years I’ve been hunting for a stage victory in the Tour de France and finally it’s happened. So far I’ve had a successful race, except for the first day I’ve been up there for every sprint. On a day like today, when there was no certainty I managed to get what I’ve always been after. _ “It was a fast day, that’s for sure and I survived both the attacks from the Astana team near the halfway mark and escaped the crash in the final kilometer. There was a little bit of luck involved but I’m really happy. To finish the day with a win and to move to second place in the points classification behind Tom Boonen is something I wouldn’t have predicted at the start of the day. I was honestly just trying to minimize my losses in the race for the green jersey… now I’m only 16 points shy of Tom. _ “I had heard a whisper that something was going to happen today. Before the feed zone a friend of mine told me that one team was planning to drive it home and split the bunch… I thought it would be Liquigas and my director warned us all to be in the front. When Astana went it was fast and it definitely animated the stage. It just proves that there’s no such thing as a dull day on the Tour de France.”