"It’s been difficult moments in the last month. And now also here, I know, we started well, but we had the crash and we have to regroup. I feel very happy - also the emotion was because my family is here - I’m really happy.
"I had a teammate in the breakaway, and this was key for my win today. I’m very happy and proud. Maybe it’s not what we expected at the beginning, but I’m very proud."
"I was feeling very good, it was a hard stage, but thanks to my team I managed to get back into the maglia rosa.
"The advantage is a big complicated, but we’ll take it day by day. Tomorrow there will be another hard one, and then the time trial will be very important. There we will play for the win."
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"I had bad legs from the start and I made a rookie mistake at the beginning, sitting at the back of the bunch on the downhill. Then Bahrain and Movistar split the bunch and I was in the second group and needed, with my bad legs, to go to the maximum to come back, in the middle of the stage. So that was really unnecessary.
"In the final I tried to limit my losses and I did that very well. My team was really strong today, they saved me a couple of times, so I have to thank them otherwise it would have been a much worse day. Bad legs today, but I hope they’ll be better tomorrow."
"At the beginning it was a bit of a drag race between a couple of teams. The boys did a good job to look after me. We had to do a big chase, but there were a couple of GC guys who missed it like Kruijswijk and Mollema and Dumoulin - we were all in the second group behind. We had a big chase, but in the end we got back together - it’s not been too bad. In the end there were a couple of guys stronger than me, that’s all there is to it."
