Alejandro Valverde (Movistar Team): “You have to accept defeats. When you win, awesome, and when you lose, it means the rivals were stronger than you. I was suffering a lot in the second ascent of Coll de Beixalis. I suffered from there and that was it. The team has been phenomenal during the whole of La Vuelta and Nairo (Quintana) proved today a good a teammate he is. Of course it hurts (to get down the podium) but you can’t ask for anything more when you’ve given it all you had. We take home the teams classification. I take the points classification and two stage wins. We have 15 days until the Worlds. It’s obvious I wasn’t at my best in the past two days but I believe I can recover for the Worlds.”
