00:00He checks around one more time, he does up the jersey, he gets ready to celebrate.
00:07Richard Catapaz turns the corner and he'll be able to see the finish line.
00:13It is a difficult climb up here to Super Devil League, but Catapaz celebrates now.
00:19Richard Catapaz, he's had the yellow jersey and now he adds the stage win.
00:25Take a bow, the Ecuadorian Eagle wins stage 17.
00:30We were still left wanting after the yellow jersey, we've been chasing a stage win the whole tour.
00:34I feel like the whole team, we've been working so hard and seemingly doing everything right,
00:40but it just hadn't gone our way.
00:42I can't tell you how satisfying it is that Richie was finally able to pull it off.
00:47It was an incredibly hard stage, so I'm just really proud of him and the team.
00:52The plan was to have Richie in the break.
00:55It was sort of emphasis more on Richie and probably Ben,
00:58but Richie was the main guy we were trying to stick into the break,
01:02so any time there was a group that didn't have him in it,
01:05we had to do our best to close it and keep the race open.
01:08That made the race really, really hard, but it worked out in his favor in the end.
01:23Yeah, I mean obviously a huge sense of satisfaction and relief.
01:28As Andrea said in the car, it was a difficult berth,
01:32but the riders didn't make a single mistake for three weeks.
01:38They excelled themselves, they were everywhere where they needed to be,
01:41and again today it was another big, big team effort.
01:45We've got 110 kilometers for the race to be, let's say, resolved in front.
01:52There was even a stage where Richie was caught behind a split shortly after the sprint,
01:58and the guys crucified themselves to bring him back into the race.
02:03Yeah, I mean that's the class he has.
02:06We're talking about a rider who had 10 days without riding his bike before the tour.
02:12Any other rider, we would have just removed him from the selection immediately.
02:17But we took the choice stroke gamble to bring him here
02:21because we believed that there was a possibility that he could ride himself into form,
02:26which is not really feasible usually in a race like the Tour.
02:32I followed Romain Bardet at the bottom there.
02:36I don't know if he was trying to launch somebody else or something,
02:39and I saw I had a gap, so I decided to go full gas.
02:43And I saw there was a gap, so I preferred to be alone rather than someone catch me.
02:49So I tried to keep Richie and I think it was Steve Williams away,
02:55and maybe I paid for that little bit in the end,
02:58but I didn't really want them to catch me because you saw the end result.
03:02Just finally, any more opportunities?
03:05If the legs allow.
03:07I don't know what the GC guys want to do in the next mountain stages,
03:12but if there's a chance I'll try.
03:15But the legs are not giving me what I need at the minute.
03:24Well, at first I didn't see the attacks at all, obviously, because I was in front of them.
03:29But, yeah, we always expect Borgacar racing aggressive,
03:34so we're always ready for that.
03:36I should talk to Jonas what happened,
03:39but for sure it's really good that me, Christoph and Tiesch were in front of the race,
03:44so we could still give them a hand in the final.
03:48I mean, there is more to come because we've got to do the rest of the race like everybody else.
03:53We've got a great team.
03:56They're doing great and hopefully this will give them a boost for the last few days.
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