One small mistake cost Oier Lazkano possible Tour de France win: "Cycling owes nothing to anyone"

Oier Lazkano has been in many breakaways in this Tour de France 2024 and today might've been the final day where he could've gotten the win. The Movistar Team rider from Alava finished fifth in Barcelonnette but was quite disappointed with how the day turned out.

He was one of the most active throughout the day, with the support of Alex Aranburu and Gregor Mühlberger in the breakaway, but could not get out of the winning attack by Michael Kwiatkowski that ended up giving the victory to Belgian Victor Campenaerts. He was in the chasing group with four other riders, but there was never good collaboration with other riders which saw the leading trio go up the road.

He spoke to Spanish radio colleagues after the stage, completely bursting, and regretting that he had not followed Campenaerts because he had him marked at the start: "I had the stage marked and it was gone, we had it within 10 seconds and in the end it was impossible". He is not satisfied with what he has done so far because he is very clear about what he wants to do in this Tour: "I don't know, I came here to win".

I have a lot to learn

Self-critical, he made it clear that he had made a mistake by not following Campenaerts at the decisive moment:

"It's my first Tour, I have a lot to learn. I've never been in such a big breakaway in a Grand Tour, from the TV it's something else. I blame myself for not following Campenaerts. He told me on stage 2 that he wanted to win this stage. From the beginning I knew he was going to be there. Richard [Carapaz] and Healy had a lot of fatigue from yesterday".

At the nailed moment he got overconfident and couldn't follow the Belgian: "He was in front of me. I saw on the right that others were going to come out, in the end they didn't come out and he went away from me. It's difficult to ride on the inside, on the inside at 180 beats you can see a tenth of the things you see on TV, that's what it is, you have to learn".

At the end, he sprinted to fifth on the day. Quique Iglesias, from Cope, asked him if the Tour owed him something and he was clear: "Cycling owes nothing to anyone. Here everyone comes here well trained, at the top of their game". Finally, he promised to keep fighting until the end: "I still have some gas left".