"I just tried and it worked!" - Thibau Nys surprises himself with a win in the queen stage of Tour de Hongrie

As unlikely as it has seemed before today's stage it was Thibau Nys who raised hands at top of the 11 kilometers-long final climb of Tour de Hongrie's third stage, the tounge-breaking Gyöngyös-Kékestető. Additionally, the Belgian now defends the leader's jersey with two stages left to complete.

"It's incredible," the youngster from Lidl-Trek said in the flash interview. For a long time it looked as if Emanuel Buchmann would triumph, but nothing could be further from the truth. The German came to a standstill in the end and Nys with Diego Ulissi managed to pass him in the final meters.

"I actually came here for the last two stages," Nys continued, referring to slightly less mountainous stages. "Actually I just wanted to test the legs and see how far I could go. After the first two stages I noticed that the legs felt a bit lazy. So I didn't know how my body was going to react to the efforts in this third stage. But the team has done one hell of a job. Mathias Vacek was super strong. In the end I felt the perfect legs to finish it off."

Nys agrees that it was important for him to remain patient. "That's completely right. The last 500 meters were very steep. So I knew I had to save up for one powerful acceleration at the end. Of course, I too had the feeling that we were not getting any closer to Buchmann. But I just tried and it worked! We came at great speed and I realized it was really going to happen. It is unbelievable!"