From the Endura Blog:
Stage win for Ion, podium finish for Nairo and the team classification too…
The curtain came down on the 103rd Tour de France today following a festive, final stage on the Champs-Elysées, won by André Greipel (Lotto Soudal). The riders had to dig deep to bring them through the eight laps on the sport’s most famous avenue. Movistar Team, who came with the biggest aspirations into this year’s race, couldn’t complete its main goal – the yellow jersey- yet they completed their efforts with generous rewards.
Nairo Quintana:
I head back home from this Tour full of happiness – it’s a major feat for me to finish on the podium after all difficulties I had to go through in this race. We rounded off our performance well, with big joy yesterday as our team-mate and friend Ion took that stage win. That was a success we had been chasing during the entire Tour. Regarding the team, I just can say “thank you” – they helped me out so much. The team GC victory is a well-deserved reward for them: my team-mates fought and gave their best every single day to do what we had planned, and that visit to the podium is quite a prize for the whole group, including our staff.
Our overview after the race can only be positive. It’s obvious that we came into this race with a much bigger and ambitious goal, but we’ve got many years ahead to keep trying. A podium in the Tour de France, the biggest race of them all, makes you feel really happy. This goes to all our fans, my family, dad and mom, who always pray for me so things go right for me. I also want to congratulate Froome: he’s a big rival, the biggest one I have to face in my sporting career, and I’m sure that this rivalry will last for many years. Sometimes he wins, sometimes – as seen during this season – it’s my turn to win.
Alejandro Valverde:
We’re super happy with these results. We took third overall, we won the teams’ classification, also one stage… these results are difficult to improve. A stage for me, you ask? It was hard. As I was still up there within the top GC guys, I was always on a leash; it already happened in Andorra on day nine. Making the breakaways was impossible for me. Maybe I had podium legs? To be honest, it doesn’t matter at all. I was strong, and one with my quality clearly has to be ambitious, but to me it was clear what my role in this Tour was. We came here to support Nairo and he’s on the podium – winning is always difficult, it’ll be up for another year to claim it. That support was the only thing that counted. The success we got in this Tour goes to those who couldn’t enjoy this podium with us – Gorka and Jesús; we just hope they get back to 100% as soon as possible. Right now, my legs are feeling tired, but there’s still two weeks before the Rio Olympics’ road race – I’m sure we will be well recovered by 6 August.
Eusebio Unzué:
I’m very satisfied. Ion’s victory yesterday was the first wish, even though not the main, we took the start of the race with: claiming one of those stage wins and raise our arms in the Tour again after three years. Fortunately, Ion rode impeccably from the start of the stage, in the last chance for the team. That downhill of the Joux Plane, contesting the victory against two world-class descenders like him – Nibali & Pantano – became a huge victory which rounds off a good race for us. Nairo’s third place marks his third podium appearance in the race, which I consider already a massive fear. Also, there’s the team GC – it’s a ranking we hold dear, it’s back-to-back victories in that classification for us, too. Surely we could have done things better, but seeing how the race developed, we must remain happy with this result.