Arnaud Démare: "It's enormous"

"Everyone dreams to win a Tour de France stage. I rate it as high as winning Milan-Sanremo but for the general public who only knows the Tour de France, it's an enormous win I got today. Probably winning Milan-Sanremo after a difficult year in 2015 has helped me tremendously in terms of confidence and it also inclined the team to recruit great riders to lead me out in the sprints. We adjusted our preparation to today's sprint according to the injuries and sicknesses we have in the team but even with an injured knee, Mickaël Delage was up there fighting for me with 5km to go. I might have had to do my own sprint because Jacopo Guarnieri crashed with 600 metres to go but from 10 to 3km to go, I was escorted at perfection. I knew it would be a chaotic sprint today because everyone was fresh after riding so slow. I found my way at the end. I was faster than Kristoff and I didn't see anything of the last crash.”