Andy Schleck – “Now I've only got one guy to watch.”

“It might have been a dramatic day for Cadel but it wasn’t for me. It was actually a good stage. It was hard at the beginning and I like that a lot. Riders just kept on attacking and it was like real racing today. There was no fooling around. [Alexandre] Vinokourov tried at the beginning, [Andreas] Kloden tried… those are big names and we had to be wary.
“We had Jens up there in the escape and he did a more than fantastic job – I don’t know what to say to thank him – and then Chris-Anker [Sorensen], Jakob [Fuglsang] worked at the front of the peloton for me. Before that I had Fabian and Stuey, Nicki – everybody – who were fantastic today. They are all part of my jersey.
“I don’t know how Jens did coming to the finish but when I looked him in the eyes in the last kilometer [of the col de la Madeleine] it was amazing what I saw. He wanted to help me get all the way to the top… but to be honest, I was on the limit.
“I saw the yellow jersey the other day and I thought, ‘I want that!’ Right now I have it and I know it’s not going to be a piece of cake to hold onto it. But I have a good team around me and of course I’m happy that I have it. It’s a dream come true to have the yellow jersey but it’s a little bit sad because everybody kind of expected it from me… but it’s something big and I recognize what we’ve done here today.
“On the final climb I attacked to try and drop Contador. It was not a test. I was going all out – I showed all the cards I had. If I attacked one more time I would have dropped myself. I’m actually pretty happy that he didn’t respond to what I was doing with one of his attacks.
“I was quite happy that we rode the last three or four kilometers together to the top.
“I’m please because I’ve won a stage and now I’ve got this jersey. It’s fantastic. Now I’m in yellow and I’ve got 40 seconds on Contador and there’s a pretty big gap to everyone else – now I’ve only got one guy to watch.”