Heading into the final kilometers of the famous climb in the Massif Central, Neilson’s only thought was the stage win. He and his teammates had made a huge effort to put him in the break, which soon gained ten minutes. At the foot of the Puy-de-Dôme, Neilson was in a great position. But when the road pitched up, and he rode into the throngs of crowds that had braved 35-degree heat to watch the Tour go up the iconic mountain for the first time in 35 years, Neilson couldn’t follow the strongest attackers. He pushed on, emptying himself under the scorching sun to finish sixth. Perhaps his earlier efforts had cost him, but he had given everything he could have given on the stage.

Neilson now leads the Tour’s climbers’ competition by 18 points, going into the first rest day.

This is what he and his teammates had to say after the race.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, when I saw the last hundred meters. The last hundred meters, I thought I was going to fall off my bike, but luckily I had just enough to muscle it over the top. Now, I am ready for the rest day.

It is really a nice feeling to be chasing after the jersey and be having quite a lot of success scoring points, consistently. But hopefully we can try to win a stage in the next two weeks as well. Hopefully, my legs will be ready to go again after the rest day.

The Puy de Dome was one of the hardest climbs I have ever ridden. It just kept getting steeper and steeper. It was still a beautiful climb, but maybe one of the hardest I have ridden.

It will be a hard fight to keep the jersey to Paris, but I am up for it.

It was pretty fast in the beginning. It was good that we had Neilson in the front to take some points, and in the end, with 15 minutes these guys started the climb, so we just saved the energy for the days to come, which are more adapted to our characteristics, and keep this guy in the polka dot jersey to Paris.

The climb was brutal, super steep, super hard. But yeah, this is the Tour de France.

Today was really hard. Maybe it was better to have one rider more with him who was working, but this was the race. We tried it, but we only had Neilson in the breakaway. We tried it, and I think this was important, but we have a lot more stages.

The rest day is going to be the best day. I am going to rest and finish watching a series. I am watching a good, good series. It is really bad. It is called the Queen of the South.

The whole team did everything right to get Neilson into that position and defend that position, including Neilson, but this is the Tour, and there are the other riders in the race and the situation in the race and this is what makes the Tour so fascinating for people. This is also the pain of it, that he got so close and it didn’t work out, but if you look at the performance of Mike Woods, you have to take your hat off to that.

Big picture, it went well. Little picture, you can get upset over things that didn’t quite work out for the stage. There were some errors that went into that, but big picture: ten more points on the KOM on a day that realistically could have been a zero, I think that is pretty good, so we will just hope Neilson continues to recover. Next time, we will just have to make sure that a couple of his friends are in the breakaway.