Mattias Skjelmose proved just how great a Dane he is with an impressive first WorldTour victory on the third stage of the Tour de Suisse.
The 22-year-old followed an attack on the final climb from the World Champion with what looked like relative ease and was part of a strong trio of riders that put daylight between themselves and the rest of their General Classification rivals.
Not only did Mattias’ grit and determination shine through the grey skies, but his strength was clear as he made a stinging final attack that saw him eventually go solo to take the stage win as well as the race leader’s yellow jersey.
Skjelmose’s Reaction:
At the end, I was more worried about Felix Gall [than Remco] because when he attacked he went really fast and I wasn’t sure if Remco was playing games or if he was on the limit. I always trusted myself and after the team worked like this I gave it everything. I had a really big question mark about my climbing ability. Okay, this is maybe not the hardest mountain stage but it’s still a long climb and I did really good, so I think we can make it a bit of a smaller question mark. It’s also my first WorldTour win so it’s incomparable to any of my other wins so far.
Quickstep put a really hard pace in the bottom of the climb and I think everybody was suffering a lot. I thought Remco was trying to play a bit worse than he actually was, but, in the end, he was not on a super day or is still finding the legs after the Giro, which I respect a lot. I worked on this since Liège, after seven days off, then straight to work on this for the Tour and this race. I think it worked out pretty good but we will have to see until Sunday how my recovery is working, but for now we definitely did a really good job, me and my coach.
My plan was to stay calm, I know we will have some really hard days in the next two days and before this I had struggled a bit with recovery so I wanted to stay as calm as possible and stay with the best guys to see what I could do. In my eyes, Remco is the best rider here, so when he went I tried to follow as best as I could. I was not sure I could follow Felix because he went really strong and I had to make a big effort to close him. Luckily for me he was also suffering a bit, and I know I have a good kick in the end and I used that to finish the job. To beat Remco, whatever the shape, is a big achievement for someone like me.
We will try our best [to defend jersey]. There are a lot of strong teams and it can be difficult. Hopefully we can defend it until the last TT and then it will be all up to me
