"This definitely is the best day of my career. I’ve won stages on the two other GTs, and it has always been on the longest stage of those GTs - that endurance effort suits my characteristics. On this kind of breakaways there always are many tactical games at stake, so I decided to go early. What I didn’t expect was leaving the rest of the group behind that early, with 88km to go. The fact I was to win the stage didn’t sink until I went under the flamme rouge: that’s when I started to cry out of pure emotion. I was actually going for the KOM jersey today because, since Schelling wasn’t on the break, I knew it was up for grabs. From now on I will try to honour the jersey, maybe even go in the break tomorrow, and absolutely go for it."
