Tadej Pogacar: "Every time I win it is even better"

Today's sixth stage of the Tour de France saw Tadej Pogacar takes his first win, and consequently jump onto the race lead in Longwy as he outsprinted his GC rivals into a dominant triumph.

“Every time I win it is even better. Today was so hard from the start, the first two hours were so crazy. The strongest guy [Van Aert] went in the breakaway, a lot of guys pulling in the peloton, all our team as well. I was thinking he would come to the finish, but in the end the peloton was stronger," he said in a post-race interview. Pogacar himself covered the yellow jersey on multiple occasions, aswell as Jonas Vingegaard who attacked early in the day.

Eventually van Aert went to the breakaway but with a small group that proved easy for the peloton to control, and the race then went on to be discussed at the finish where he was the main favourite. A move in the penultimate climb signaled that he had the legs, and with UAE Team Emirates setting a strong pace in Longwy, the race was set perfectly for the Slovenian to sprint to the win.

“We got to the final climbs and I was feeling good. The team did an incredible good job bringing me to the perfect position. I am so happy," he added. Unmatched, the ten bonus seconds he took were enough to go over Neilson Powless who sat second in the beginning of the day - after van Aert was dropped from the peloton earlier on.

“It was not a pure sprint, because we rode the last two climbs really hard. It was above our thresholds and was super-hard to the final climb, hectic and everything. I guess I had good legs to push at the end," Pogacar concluded. He now sits in the lead of the race into the first mountain stage of the race, where the peloton will have the ascent of the Planche des Belles Filles to tackle.