"Everyone looked at us to catch the break" - Olav Kooij praises Jumbo-Visma teammates after second straight Tour of Britain stage win

Olav Kooij's tally of victories for the season to nine on stage 2 of the 2023 Tour of Britain. Afterwards, the Jumbo-Visma starlet thanked his teammates for their hard work throughout the day.

"After Sunday's stage, everyone looked at us to catch the break," Kooij recapped in his post-stage interview. “We have deployed two riders to manage the breakaway for the day. It went very quickly towards the last three, slightly descending kilometres. After our exploration, we knew that we had to be the first to start the last kilometre. We succeeded in that.”

Once again, Kooij benefited from a supreme leadout by his superstar teammate, Wout van Aert. “Wout then started on a slightly sloping stretch and then you know that everyone is suffering. After that I only had to ride my sprint," Kooij explains. “The boys have now worked hard for two days and it will be a long week if we have to keep doing this. So we will discuss how we will approach it.”

In the finale, Kooij was caught up in a scary moment that saw Tobias Lund Andresen crash and hit the tarmac incredibly hard. “We went from left to right and then drove very close to the cones. It's never fun when you see something like that happen," the Dutchman says of the incident.