“The emotion is still the same. It’s unbelievable: four victories here the plan was for one! As a team, we’re now on six, I think… I’ve lost count, we’ve won so many! The stages that we’ve won, we’ve really committed to the plan that we had. You’ve seen the boys all day today, they’ve just been pushing so much wind. To finish it off like that, with Wout [van Aert] bringing m to the line in a perfect place in such a chaotic finale, it was perfect. I don’t really think you can compete [with Van Aert as a lead-out man]. It was a shame that we lost Christophe [Laporte], but it’s still unbelievable what we can do even when we’re a man down. I really trusted Wout and followed his wheel all the way. It’s incredible that he can bring me in such perfect position in such a chaotic race.”
The last rider to win four stages in his Grand Tour debut was Fernando Gaviria in 2017, and he won the opening stage of the Tour de France the next year. “The Tour starts in UK next year, and I already said to the team two years ago now, when I heard about a UK start, I’d really like to be there on start line and to have guys like Wout and Christophe there also. We can really try to replicate what we do here into a Yellow Jersey on day 1.”
