Serguei Ivanov – Today I can appreciate it...”

“I have been relatively quiet in this year’s Tour because I was waiting for the right moment to show myself. Nobody would have seen me in the finish of stages until now because I’ve been saving myself a little. Today there was a good opportunity and I decided in the morning that I had to go on the attack. The weather was quite good for me but at the beginning it was very hard. We had been attacking for a long time but the peloton was always just about 20 seconds behind. We were all thinking, ‘Oh, we still have to push.’ I had nothing in my legs anymore but then suddenly the time checks started showing that our lead was going up and up.
“Everyone saw that there were 12 of us in the break and we were all waiting for the final kilometers especially because there was a headwind and no one tried an early attack. The group started to accelerate about 15km from the finish and I waited patiently for my moment. I thought it would be a very hard final because of the wind and a little hill but I timed the move well.
“This is the first Tour de France stage victory for Katusha and it’s a great one and it makes me very happy to deliver a win for the team. This is not the same feeling as the first time I won a stage of the Tour; back then [2001] I was young and I didn’t understand what it was all about… I was just flying. Today I can appreciate it. It’s incredible.”