"You can’t know when you’ll get your opportunity. You try, you try… And sometimes it works out. I knew it was a good finale for me and it was gonna be very hard to be in the break. After many efforts, I was up there. It was a big breakaway so it was hard to make it work in the end with riders like Geraint Thomas, the FDJ… I felt good at the end. I saved my sprint until the last 300 metres and I did it. I can’t be happier than this. The goal was to win a stage. We had to wait for the second week. But now we’ve achieved a goal, we’ll enjoy and keep fighting! My father was here at the start and at the finish. I’m happy to have my relatives close to me and this is for them and also for those who couldn’t be there.
Leading the KOM standings came as a secondary prize because of the victory. I scored points on the other days, and with this victory we've got the jersey. At least tomorrow we'll keep it, and then in the Pyrenees it's going to be very difficult. I think it's going to be for the general classification and pure climbers. We'll fight for sure. The truth is that we got off to a bad start with the crash of Bryan [Coquard] and it took us a while to get back into the rhythm, and now that we've achieved one of our objectives, we have to keep fighting."
