2011 5TH/DSQ

“I JUST THOUGHT, EITHER I BLOW UP, OR I BLOW THE RACE APART”

On the race’s final mountain stage, I decided to do one of the things that people have most admired in my career, which was to attack very early, on the Télégraphe. Finally I got caught, but I tried again on Alpe d’Huez and those results, in any case, were taken away from me [because of the 2010 suspension]. But it’s one of the stages I’m most proud of, the way I tore up the script and went for it like that. It was one of those days where I would have normally raced much more conservatively, but things had gone so badly beforehand in the Tour that I felt I had no choice but to really go for it.

I went for it again in the final time trial in Grenoble, and I did that really well, finishing third behind Tony Martin and Evans. So I finished the Tour on the up, but so many factors had come together that finally it couldn’t work out.