Thrilling attack "was not planned" says Tadej Pogacar

Despite today being the flattest road stage of Tirreno-Adriatico, it didn't prevent defending champion Tadej Pogacar from trying to flip the script and try to take some important time on his GC rivals, as he launched a move towards the end of today's stage.

"It was not planned," he said regarding the attack, although there was a clear purpose of getting the three seconds available at the intermediate sprint in Amelia. "Pascal [Ackermann] was feeling good today so he wanted hard pace, in the end we caught the breakaway and three seconds on the road so I went for the sprint."

After getting an extra three seconds for the overall classification, Pogacar continued the move as he had teammate Marc Soler with him, Tao Geoghegan Hart and Julian Alaphilippe who worked, despite having Remco Evenepoel in the peloton: "In the end we had a gap, good riders in the front so we tried out best."

"Next days are hard and a lot of small climbs, so for sure it can be something like this," he concluded. As Tirreno-Adriatico enters hilly terrain tomorrow, the GC will start to take shape much more.