Evenepoel: “Tomorrow, I will need super fresh legs again”

Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team): “I think I said that the goal was not to lose time and if there was an opportunity, to take time. I think I took time on a lot of guys except for the two most important ones, Primoz [Roglic] and Enric [Mas]. But it was good to see Primoz being really strong today, it’s nice to see him like this. It’s good for the race. I just did my best. My team was superb today, we controlled from the start, and it wasn’t easy! A big congrats to all my teammates, because they pushed me towards this result. In my radio, they try to explain me a bit the situation, but I think they were a bit behind. At one moment, they told me I was with fourteen guys but we were only four or five. I didn’t really know what the situation was. In the last km I saw we were only Primoz, Enric and Rodríguez, so a perfect day. I’m really happy with how I felt today. I hope I can recover really well because tomorrow I will need super fresh legs again. What I saw from the past is that there weren’t really big gaps, but if you explode it’s completely done for sure on a climb like that. I’m gonna keep the confidence. I know it’s a climb that suits me very well in duration, so I’m just gonna give my all. My team is very strong. We’re going to try to keep the jersey and why not to go for a stage win, that would be really nice.”