"I didn’t expect to be wearing the white jersey after the stage. The plan was to go for the victory. I only realised I was on track to claim this jersey with 30 kilometres to go, and that realisation gave me a kick. From then on, I tried to pull as hard as possible to keep things together for Mads and secure the lead of the young rider classification.
I said before the Tour I wanted to take this race step by step, racing without pressure. I am in good shape and I believed there was a possibility to go for a stage. Today, we did it as a team and our performance was super good. It’s my third Grand Tour and my third white jersey - it’s unbelievable.
It was a masterpiece today. Everything was so perfect today for the team. Even ourselves couldn’t expect to be that good. All three of us were really strong today. We had to leave the ego aside, and just make a plan to win the stage. Mads [Pedersen] was feeling really good today. The priority was to claim the green jersey, but we knew that he could play for the stage win if he survived the climbs because he was the best sprinter of the group, and the group would be very small coming into the finish.
When I was up the road with [Jan] Tratnik, I couldn’t take turns because our plan was to support Mads. It was still good I was up there to control the situation. Up the last climb, the others went really hard but then we paced Mads real good. From then on we knew we were 100% going to get the win today, because we were feeling great and were working well together. It was a super team performance."
