Jelle Vanendert – “Winning at Plateau de Beille... it's not bad, huh?”

“It’s like a dream come true. After last year, when I didn’t race for seven or eight months because of two knee injuries, I think my career has now started. It’s difficult to consider the polka-dot jersey because they changed the points system and so I think it’s going to be difficult with Samuel Sanchez because he’s going to go for the climbing classification and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to always be in front of him in the mountain stages.
“Winning at Plateau de Beille... it’s not bad, huh? Two mountain top finishes: one time second, one time first... I’ve tried two times and luckily now I have two things: a prize jersey and a stage win, so I’m very glad.
“On the last climb I saw that Andy was watching Contador a little bit and Contador was watching Frank.
“I thought that Contador could just answer the attacks of the Schlecks; Evans and Basso are also there for the general classification and it was only me who was not going for the classification so I thought that I could go and try to get an advantage.
“It’s lovely to see the images of the finish. It’s really very nice.
“The new points system makes defending the jersey difficult but we’ll see...
“When you look at the battle of the favorites, we see that they do not want to put all their cards on the table for now, because the Alps are yet to come. And when there is a team with two riders in great shape, it's really an advantage – that’s how it for the Schleck brothers right now. So I tell myself that if Jurgen Van de Walle was still there, with the shape he had, and the way I’m going, we could have done great things.”