Eight seconds were the gains from a day's work at the Tour de France for UAE Team Emirates. Tadej Pogacar and the team were satisfied with the showdown at Grand Colombier, even if they missed on a big goal which was to go for the stage win.
"I would have liked to win, but I take my hat off to the leading group today, with a super strong Kwiatkowski. In the end it was quite a successful day for us, with some seconds we took," the Slovenian said. UAE did not make the effort to keep a big breakaway from going up the road but did then ride throughout the whole afternoon to try and chase it down. Ultimately it proved unsuccessful with Michal Kwiatkowski taking the win, Maxim van Gils survived to take second place on the day.
Pogacar had UAE pace the whole 17-kilometer ascent, with Adam Yates launching an attack close to the end, but it all came down to the last 500 meters. There he accelerated fiercely, gained a few seconds on Jonas Vingegaard and crossed the road in third place. "The Tour is still long, but we are in a good situation at the moment," he assured, now only nine seconds behind the Dane.
"We are now looking at it day by day, for new opportunities to take back seconds. It was a great team performance today, we can draw confidence from that. It may not have been a victory, but it was a small victory in the battle for yellow."
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