"Jonas really tried today. They [Visma] rode quite well as a team, but luckily I had better legs than in 2021 and could cope with Jonas’ acceleration. I’m happy with my performance today, as I could defend the Yellow Jersey as we had planned in the morning. There were some points where I was suffering, but today was just one climb - one effort full gas from bottom to top. Next days will have several climbs and be more tiring for the body.
We let Pavel [Sivakov] and Marc [Soler] go in the breakaway because we were not too interested in the stage and, if we had to ride the climb, we had Tim and Adam plus the possibility of asking them to stop. Then Visma was very aggressive and we nearly caught the breakaway. We saw the winners with one kilometer to go, but not even Superman could have caught them. Chapeau to VPP - he deserved the victory, these long climbs is where he shines the most. My big focus was Jonas, and nothing else. Jonas and I will race each other until Paris. This was a very hard stage, especially after a rest day, and I am happy to tick it off.
I don’t think we could ride much faster today. Jonas and his team put some very good pacing, from the bottom and also later with the two guys up the road. This is the limit of how fast we could ride."
