Going into stage 12 of the Tour de France, we knew there was a great chance that the break would stay away to the finish. The route ducked and dived up and down through sun-baked vineyards from Roanne all the way to Belleville-en-Beaujolais. The stage would be very hard for any team to control. We wanted to send our fast finishers Magnus Cort and Alberto Bettiol up the road. But then, they got caught behind a crash in the chaos of the first hour, and our hopes fell on Andrey Amador.

The Costa Rican workhorse had made the split. He rode off the front with a very powerful group. Andrey rode with courage and intelligence until the final climb, but couldn’t match with the best when they attacked uphill.

Once the break had gone, Andrey’s teammates focused on saving their strength.

Tomorrow is Bastille Day in France and Neilson Powless will wear the Tour’s polka-dotted climber’s jersey into the Jura. After a fast, flat start out of Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne, Stage 13 will finish on the summit of the Grand Colombier, one of the hardest mountains in this year’s race.

Read our riders' thoughts from after today’s stage.

It was a really hard day. It was full gas from the start. We knew it would be an important day. The breakaway would arrive at the finish. Everyone knew that. I think we need to be happy. We tried it. This is the most important. I think we have more options. We go day by day.

It was a strong breakaway. I tried with Van der Poel in the first downhill, maybe to win a few seconds ahead of the next climb. And maybe we gained 20 to 30 seconds on the climbers. Hand-to-hand, it would have been difficult. But Van der Poel attacked me and I was alone and in the last 500 meters of the second climb, I got dropped by the others. But I tried. I think my only option today was to get ahead on the downhill and to have some seconds for the last climb, but I couldn’t. I tried, but when you don’t have the legs, you don’t have the legs.

We will have good days. The next stages are better for Rigo and Chavito.

It was not a bad day, but it was hard. I asked myself the question if it was better to try and get in the break or to preserve my energy for the stages to come in the Alps. After a while, I decided to keep calm. For my strategy, I have not focused on watching this or that rider. That will be more the case when we reach the real mountains. I have climbed the Grand Colombier before and it was very demanding. Perhaps, a breakaway can make it to the end, but I think I will focus more on the stages with more climbs and more points to go for.

Today was a nice stage, a hard stage, a fast stage. And it was hard for me. But everything is under control. We will see tomorrow. Today was not controlled. Everyone was jumping. It was a hard, hard stage. It was nice to see for the people, but hard for the cyclists. I lost twenty minutes today, not too much.

It was really intense, the first part of the stage. We were racing well, controlling a little bit in the peloton to make sure that no group went without Magnus, and we tried to do this until the top of the third-category climb, but there was a crash in the peloton that split the peloton in two. I mean the peloton—at that moment I think there were like 70 riders there, and it split on the downhill when De La Cruz crashed and only Amador stayed in front. The others were behind the crash. At that moment ,we were out of the race and we couldn’t come back. We had only Andrey there and then we played his card. We asked him just to pay attention in the first downhill and that is what he did. He got 20 seconds with van der Poel. And then van der Poel basically dropped him and he couldn’t follow. He came back afterwards but at the end he didn’t have the legs to make the difference on the final climb.