It's a great surprise but I think it's the result of a lot of hard work today from my teammates as well. They did a fantastic job on the final climb. Especially a guy like Gianni Moscon – it's his first Grand Tour with Team Sky. He was great today, as were the rest of the guys.
(Was it your plan to fight for intermediates?) I've lost a Vuelta before by 13 seconds so I'm going to fight for every second I can at this point.
(How does it feel to be back in red?) It's been a long time. It feels amazing to put it back on and to be in this position. It's something I've thought about for a long time and obviously I worked hard to be here after the Tour, so I'm really happy to be in this position.
(Can you hold onto red all the way through to the end?) It's going to be really hard, especially with all the time bonuses out there, and there are still only two seconds to the next group of riders. So it's still really close. I don't expect to keep it all the way until the end but I'm certainly going to fight for it.
It's a pity but the Vuelta is long. We'll have to see how it goes. The truth is, it's a missed opportunity. I wanted to take the race lead today to arrive in Catalunya tomorrow with the red jersey, but it was not to be.
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Second place is the worst place.
For today's select group, the cards are all on the table now. For others, they'll need to recover a bit out on the road.
On the second last climb we tried to make an uncomfortable pace for the other riders and we already dropped a few guys like Alaphilippe and Jungels, then it was the last climb and my goal was to take it really hard from the bottom and I did it. I think it was a really good day for us and at least we tried the legs of everybody.
The main goal for today was to get some gap on some main GC riders. We did it on Contador and we were already happy. To have the red jersey is really nice and we will try to defend it.
I have had very bad sensations, also climbing La Rabassa I saw it already. I don't know what happened to me but I felt super, super weak. Even when we went at a relatively calm pace was difficult to be there and I decided to tell my teammate Peter [Stetina] just to try to pass the day as well as possible and wait some more days to see. I hope that is only a bad day, maybe because the lack of competition. The most important now is to recover and try to find the reason of this performance.
Now the most important thing is to know why I had so bad a day before deciding the tactics. I want to enjoy this Vuelta in any case. It's the Vuelta where I'm most relaxed in my whole career and I'm enjoying it at the maximum. For sure I want to be more ahead, I couldn't today but I'll try in the next days.
