Tom Boonen – “It's a battle all the way...”

“I’m happy and I know why: we’re getting closer to Paris! It’s a battle all the way to the finish… that’s what I said on the first day I took the green jersey and it remains the same now. As long as you’re not 48 points in the lead, you’re not safe in the knowledge that victory in the points classification is assured. _ “The best place to be right now is in the peloton. I was talking about it last night with my room-mate Steven De Jongh and it’s unbelievable to be a rider in the Tour de France; you’re isolated from the world. We do the race and the only people we see afterwards are from the media. I get back to the team bus to see the same 10 people and go to the hotel. And you repeat this schedule every day for three weeks. It’s hard to know what’s going on anywhere else. _ “In the peloton it’s okay. The riders who are still here are supposed to be riders who are clean and I believe it because all the positive cases have been sent home… I don’t know what’s still going to happen – if there’s something going to happen – but I hope that we can get to Paris with the riders who are now in the peloton. If they are catching more riders than previous years it’s because it’s being controlled well. I never ask questions when I see someone get a good result. Sometimes the media tries to make me say something but I know that others can also talk about me so I have to believe what I see.”