Sylvain Chavanel (Cofidis) in the break (Image credit: AFP)
Sorry I wasn't able to send in a diary entry last night, but I really had to relax and recuperate from that stage and the media attention that followed. As you will probably know, yesterday was a beautiful day for me, even though there was a bit of disappointment after I crossed the line. It could have turned out differently, but that's the sport... Afterwards, you turn the page and think of tomorrow.
Initially, I wasn't going to break away early in yesterday's stage at all, as I didn't want to waste any energy. I ended up doing it because an important escape formed with guys like Voigt and Wegmann in it. So I had to join them. Moreover, you never know what can happen on a course like that one - with such a bumpy profile, previous Tours have shown that even the yellow jersey could have been for grabs, so...
After a few guys sat up, we insisted with Wegmann and a rider from Liquigas, while Bouygues Telecom was chasing us. They caught us on the first categorized climb, but I was able to score the points anyway. Behind me, Voeckler went for the second place at the KOM, so we got together on the descent.
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We rode on, and the bunch let us. With Voeckler, we had an agreement that we'd share the mountain points equally. If I would have taken all the points at all four categorized climbs, I wouldn't have had the polka dot jersey anyway. So we decided to share so both of us were happy.
During that long phase when we had a big gap, it wasn't actually that hard - it was only when Moreau and Le Lay joined us that we really gave it full gas. During those last 30 kilometres, we were really going fast. I don't know the average speed we had but it was impressive, because we had the wind in our favour.
In the finale, when the bunch came back on us, I tried again on my own. There was a bit of a headwind, and the guys behind rode like hell, so I ended up getting caught, unfortunately.
