"I can’t believe I’ve won. It was a long, hot, hard stage today. Mid-way I spoke to Matt Hayman and he told me: ‘if you have good legs you had to race because you never know what will happen tomorrow.'
"Neil Stephens told me about the climb and said it was really steep, at 10% and even one part at 14%. I had good legs on that part and attacked. I’m really happy I want to thank all the team and staff again, they’re all amazing. Caleb Ewan won yesterday but today he went for bottles. This team is like a family.
"Darryl (Impey) put me in a really good position and I started the climb in first position. I saw Amador suffering as he pushed the pace. When I saw that he wasn’t comfortable, I tried an went for it."
"I decided to give it a go but one of the guys was only three back in the overall. They started to chase us early and then when Movistar came on the front, I knew there wasn’t much chance, but you’ve got to try. I’m hunting for a stage win and I hope I can find one.
"It’s been hot like this every other day and so it's quite nice for breakaway attempts. I’ll try again in a few days."
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"Not with these conditions [could I go for the win]. I hate this heat and it was very hard for me. I don’t know if it was the same for other riders but for me it was too hot.
"It’s very bad. I want some rules for this weather because it’s impossible. You take water from the car and then after five minutes you have tea."
"It was just the plan to keep him [Chaves] up there. I think he’s just got great condition at the moment and when you’ve got good condition it seems like he can’t do anything wrong. We’ve had a great Tour so far.
"It’s much better start, that’s for sure. We had a really hard Tour de France, things didn’t go as well as planned. That’s cycling and sports in general, you have your ups and downs and this is fantastic."
Neil Stephens (Orica-GreenEdge DS)
"It was a great success, we weren’t really expecting that. We wanted to maintain the position that we had. Esteban, when he can, he tries to take advantage of whatever he can do and he took advantage of it today and he took the win today.
"I don’t know what to expect from him. I didn’t expect what he did today and he did it. So whatever he does is fantastic. It’s been a fantastic week for us, we’re over the moon. Let’s just try to enjoy today and then we’ll think about the three weeks after that."
