"I didn’t do anything today. My team did it all. It was old school - run of the mill, really. You can say it was a textbook lead-out. Back in 2015, on this Valence stage, I got dropped and André Greipel won the sprint. We studied the route time and again, and tried to make echelons work in our favour. The bunch didn’t really split, but we didn’t mind because we were confident we had a good train. I just had to finish out the work from an Olympic track rider, a road World Champion, the winner of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the winner of the Tour of Flanders… I feel so humble they all devote their work to me. In the end, I didn’t do anything: just keeping my speed for the latest 150 meters. I came here to win stages. If I win the green jersey as a consequence, it’s fine, but it is not my priority. The team stayed around me to keep me safe when the rivals accelerated to try and drop me on the climbs. I knew BikeExchange would try to do that! A bit of support from my team just what I needed to get over those climbs, and they helped me out brilliantly."
