Luca Mozzato takes his first pro win at Tour de Limousin: "I must especially thank my teammates. I think they believed in it more than me!"

On the 2nd stage of the Tour du Limousin, it was Luca Mozzato who raised his arms, winning for the first time in his career in the professional ranks. The 25-year-old Italian sprinted ahead of Lewis Askey and Benoît Cosnefroy.

This is the first professional victory for Mozzato, who joined Team Arkéa-Samsic at the start of the season, and the Italian rider wanted to highlight the immense work of his teammates to allow him to compete in the final of the stage: "For this day, I must especially thank my teammates. I think they believed in it more than me! They took charge of the operations really early. In my head, it made me really happy. It's not It's not always clear in a team to trust a rider who hasn't won so much. For that, I really have to thank them because they believed in me, and they did a really good job to catch the breakaway. They did their best for me," he said.

Faced with a tenacious breakaway, Mozzato doubted his chances for victory: "I especially doubted 30-40km from the finish when there weren't many people to ride and we weren't gaining a lot of time on the breakaway. In fact, with the battle that there was in the last 30 kilometers, we were able to play for victory," he explained.

After several top 10s in the Tour de France last July, the clock is now on for the Italian, who obviously hopes to rack up new victories among the professionals: "Of course, I'm super happy because it's the first among the pros. All victories are special, but this one is going to have an incredible place in my head. I feel soothed, yes. We've been talking about this first victory for three years. I've missed it a lot of times. Now, it happened, I hope to get others. We'll see, winning is always difficult," concluded Mozzato.