"Gives us confidence towards the Tour" - Carlos Rodriguez closes Dauphine with confidence-boosting stage win

Carlos Rodriguez will head to the Tour de France full of confidence after the INEOS Grenadiers rider managed to take victory on the final stage of the 2024 Criterium du Dauphine, moving up to 4th overall in the process.

"We wanted to go for the win and move up on the GC. The plan was to get someone in the break in order to have more cards to play, and maybe fight for the win with someone or otherwise have someone there to help us in the final," Rodriguez explained of the INEOS Grenadiers strategy in his post-stage interview after taking the stage win. "We were able to put Omar Fraile in the break and behind we made the race as hard as we could."

On the final climb especially, the duo of Rodriguez and INEOS Grenadiers teammate, Laurens De Plus were real animators, even dropping the Maillot Jaune of Primoz Roglic with their attacks and causing chaos in the race. In the end, it all resulted the in stage win for the Spaniard, moving up to 4th in the general classification as a result. "We were there among the best and luckily I could get the stage win so yeah, I'm really happy with how things went. I'm really thankful to the team for all their help over this week and yeah, now I'm looking forward to the next one," continues Rodriguez.

On Roglic's weakness, did Rodriguez see positive signs ahead of the Tour de France? "It just shows you must always fight until the end. I was just focusing on myself and always doing my best. The others can be worse, but we must always be giving our best," he concludes. "It's always good to win. That gives us confidence towards the Tour. Hopefully, we can get even better results there!"