“To be honest, I'd almost given up hope of the stage win. It was starting to look very disappointing when I saw Chris beat my times at the intermediate check. I nearly started to cry. I couldn't believe it. I was more-or-less sure about the win as I had a good advantage to guys like ‘Chava' and Kwiatkowski who really strong time trial riders so I expected that Froome might get to within 30 seconds or something like that but not beating me at the intermediates.
“Now I'm really happy and maybe it's nicer to win this way.
“Luckily some of my skin is back [after the accident of stage one] and I can sleep on my back again. I'm more-or-less recovered... for sure there are still some wounds that are open but we riders are used to this so it's no problem any more.
“When I heard that I could continue the Tour de France I knew I wouldn't be 100 per cent there for the team time trial but I always expect to have a good performance today and I'm really happy now that I could do that. At the end of the day I'm the lucky guy and I think I deserve a little bit of luck.”
