It was an incredible stage. After my first victory I was keeping fresh to try again today. I was a bit afraid at the beginning – I spent a lot of energy and had to sprint like 100 times just to get in the breakaway.
Once I was there I said, "Today can be again my day." I felt good form from the beginning, I was climbing easy. I kept calm until the last climb and there I wanted to see how the others were doing, and when I saw I had good legs I tried to go alone. It’s incredible, it’s been my dream since I was a kid to win a Grand Tour stage solo, and today the dream becomes real.
Chris Froome (Sky) - race leader, crashed on stage 12
I'm doing OK, thankfully. I'm just grateful they weren't more serious. It's never nice to crash, but in the end I had two teammates with me, they were fantastic. Mikel Nieve and Wout Poels, they helped me all the way to the finish and helped me to limit the losses to the Vincenzo Nibali group. I just slipped, I lost my front wheel in a corner. Same for the second one. [There were] really dry, slippery corners and I just lost my front wheel.
(On losing time to Nibali) Of course I don't like to give away time, but I'm grateful it's 20 seconds and not one minute.
(On Contador's attack) Of course Alberto's known for taking the race on and never giving up and I think he's living up to that.
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I think he crashed one time and then he had to change the bike so we lost a lot of time and then we went full gas but it is not too bad. These things can happen. One crash in the worst moment. We were with Wout and me and finally we didn’t lose too much time and after a crash I don't think it is so bad.
With Alberto you can always expect these things. We were waiting and we had it all under control with Wout and me but after the crash it wasn't so good for me.
It was a scenario that was better than we could have expected. I attacked, I spoke with Nicolas Roche and went with him, but he was unable to follow. I knew I had a teammate up the road and we gave it everything together. The descent was a complicated one because it was a slippery surface, so we had to give it respect while turning the pedals as hard as possible.
As for Froome, he crashed but he got back up and didn't lose much time. Taking into account the finish to this stage, we weren't really expecting anything, so we can be very happy with what we got.
It's been a few days already that I've felt good. We saw this stage and had it marked.
Tomasz was better, and you just have to say congratulations to him.
This has been a Vuelta of bad luck. I wanted to win for the team, too, to raise the morale a bit. I tried. But the truth is it's been an unlucky Vuelta. Today, [Serge] Pauwels had to head home and it's a bit demoralizing being down to just four riders.
I'm in good shape right now, with form, and this is my home race, so I'll be trying until the last day.
It was a really bad day for [Froome]. We were descending really fast. We were just behind Sky and behind him. I passed him and he was stopping for a bit to change the bike, and then I didn't see what happened behind. I think he crashed again. These things happen in cycling, in racing.
[I feel] really good. Today I was there with the favourites on the last climb again. We'll see day by day how the legs go, how they're responding, because it's becoming a really demanding Vuelta.
When I watched the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia on TV, I dreamed of one day wearing the best young rider's jersey. This year they at least have a prize for the best young rider in the Vuelta, which didn't have one. We'll keep going forward little by little, and hopefully keep earning it.
