Tony Martin – Realistic About His Position

“The preparation for the sprint was close to perfect but in the end we couldn’t deliver Mark to the line. We lost Adam Hansen. He’s one of the men for the lead-out and so we had one man less and it was maybe not totally perfect but when we realized that Mark was in the front we thought we could make a good result today.
“For a while I thought that Adam had withdrawn from the race but then he came up to the front of the bunch and worked for the team; I was really surprised and happy to see that he is more or less okay. He has a strong character and he’s a really good rider and it was impressive to see that he found the will to continue.
“On a day like this, it was pretty clear that Fabian could hold the yellow jersey so we didn’t focus on trying to take that. There was nothing that put his lead in danger and if there are no more big crashes, I think that he’ll keep the jersey for maybe 10 days.
“Tomorrow is again a day for the sprinters. The road is not so hard that Fabian could not follow so there’s no point in me trying to take back 10 seconds in order to take the yellow jersey.
“I’m looking at the race on a day to day basis, I want to keep the white jersey as long as possible. I’ll see how I can go over the cobbles and then see what happens after that. In the mountains, I don’t know how long I can hold onto it.”