Louis Meintjes: "I was able to take revenge on all those guys who made me bite my teeth in the flat stages"

The fourteenth stage of the Tour de France saw a considerable jump in Louis Meintjes’s GC position. He finished in 10th position, 1 minute and 12 seconds behind stage winner Michael Matthews.

The South African rider was part of a large breakaway group. "I'm very happy with my second day on the offensive here at the Tour de France," Meintjes said. He continues, "The beginning of the stage was very intense because of a big fight to form the breakaway. I tried to jump in about 20 times, but it was clear that some teams wanted to prevent me from being in the breakaway unless they were in it themselves.”

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In the final kilometers, Meintjes was getting too close to Vingegaard so Jumbo Visma sent Wout Van Aert to neutralize him in the end."In the final part of the stage, there were a lot of attacks and I was lucky that there was always a team not represented, so I often got help to keep the leading group together. I was able to take revenge on all those guys who made me bite my teeth in the flat stages and managed to win back time on my competitors in the general classification," concluded Meintjes.

Before the start of the fourteenth stage, he was 13th in GC, almost 15 minutes from yellow jersey. After the end of the stage, he sits in 6th position in GC, just 4 minutes and 24 seconds behind the overall leaderJonas Vingegaard.