"I'm sorry this happened because Elia [Viviani] is always correct in the sprints and didn't really do anything wrong today. For me he won the stage today. If you watch the replay, you can see he didn't do it on purpose, he didn't look back.
"He was just trying to do his sprint, it was a severe decision. I like to win fair and square out on the road, and today I was beaten by Elia. He's a great rider and I'm sorry for him."
"I knew it was a headwind so I said to [Fabio] Sabatini to put me in a good position and when I saw him go on the left I thought 'ok I'll follow [Pascal] Ackermann'. Yesterday he demonstrated he has really good legs, he's one of the best sprinters. I knew I had to go short and yeah, that worked really well.
"It was an amazing day because everyone was stressed waiting for crosswinds but in the end nothing happened, so it's ok."
"To be honest it was pretty stressful all day. Obviously, it was a super long stage at 220km. It was a pretty tough one actually and then all the GC guys and sprinters wanted to be at the front in case there was a split because we thought there was going to be a crosswind coming into that last 5 kilometres. So, I think that just made it super stressful.
"I can’t tell you much about the finish because I was off the back a bit.
"I think for sure we didn’t get it right today and we’re not going to get it right every day. I don’t know what actually happened so I guess after our debrief, we’ll figure it out. But the team protected me and kept me out of the wind so I need to thank them for that.
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"Tomorrow should be another long and tough stage, so we’ll see what happens."
“With only one rider in the breakaway, it made it a very long stage. It enabled me to enjoy the maglia rosa a bit more. I wasn’t really scared of the crosswinds at the end because we are a team from Holland so we know how to deal with the wind.”
