Romain Bardet was delighted with the first yellow jersey of his career after the opening stage of the Tour de France to Rimini. In the flash interview afterwards, he talked about the journey with his teammate Frank van den Broek on the way to the stage victory.
“It was just pure cycling,” Bardet said. “We are just two mates on the bike riding as fast as we can and going through pain. We knew it would be hard in the last 15km, but we got more confident as we went further and further.”
“You keep looking back and see the peloton coming but you don’t really have time to think about anything. It’s a total effort,” Bardet said. “It brings so much more because it was the only way we could do it today. I say we because he won as much as me today. It’s just the way we wanted to race here.”
“It’s the first day of his first ever Tour de France and he’s one of the three guys with Warren and me to have permission to be in the break today and to see if we could score some points and maybe go all the way”.
“It’s crazy to be the strongest from the initial break and it was the confirmation that we could go all the way to the finish. I think I wouldn’t have done it without him, so it was a collective victory.”
“It’s an unthinkable scenario that became a reality,” Bardet said. “I followed my instincts by attacking. I must conclude that when I attack,
