On stage two of the Tour de France, Neilson Powless won the fight to keep his polka dot jersey for another day. He’d secured his lead in the climbers’ competition the day before, on the hardest climb of stage one, but knew that his best chance of keeping the King of the Mountains shirt was to go in the break. The longest stage of this year’s Tour lay ahead of him. Stage two would traverse the green hills of the Basque Country from the region’s capital, Vitoria-Gasteiz to the finish by the seafront in the Belle Epoque resort of San Sebastian. The final climb was the fearsome Jaizkibel, made famous by the Donostia-Donostia Klasikoa, which Neilson won in 2021. Odds were that the GC favorites would attack there, so Neilson decided to go for the early move. He powered his way into a break of three that half the peloton wanted to be in and made sure he crossed the first four summits of the race first to get the most points. On the last climb before Jaizkibel, Neilson went solo. Although his gap was shrinking, he tucked his in his arms and gave the peloton a run for it. The main group had to chase hard to catch him before the top, but Neilson had already guaranteed that he would spray champagne from the podium in San Sebastian.

Read his thoughts about today’s stage, and then hear about how it went for his teammates.

Today’s stage went sort of according to plan. We wanted to be in the breakaway, be it with me or with any of my teammates. In the end it was me who went in a breakaway that was too small and made me spend more energy than I would have liked. When the road got wet, we started to hope and believe it might be possible to make it to the finish. Unfortunately, I lost Rémi [Cavagna] and Edvald [Boasson Hagen] too early. Had we been together until Jaizkibel, we may have made it to the finish line, but we were all on our limit. When I hit Jaizkibel, the only thing I could do was riding on my threshold and hoping for the best. But, as things panned out, I would have needed to be one minute faster up the climb to keep the main group at bay. It just wasn’t meant to be my day. As for the KOM classification, it’s still a narrow lead - if I miss one break in the mountains it will be gone, and we are still a long way from reaching Paris. It’s very nice to be in the lead. I’m already in love with this polka-dot jersey. I fell immediately in love with it, indeed. Let’s see how long I can wear it.

It was pretty fast, intense, hard. It was inspirational what Neilson did today. He is so strong the guy, and he really deserves to go to the podium. It is unbelievable, and that is really good for everyone in this bus. The Basque fans were crazy. They are the best. They are the best fans in the world. I love it here. Tomorrow is the next day.

It was still a hard day. Not much happened. We tried for the break and got Neilson in there, so that was nice for him to get more points, but it was too small of a group. And for me there was not too much more to do, but there were still a lot of—I would call them mountains, but I am from Denmark. In any case, they were climbs. It was a hard day by the end of it.

I am happy, because with Neilson, we keep the jersey. Everybody is happy here! We tried to be in the breakaway with teammates, or me, or whatever, and I think we can be satisfied, eh.

Yeah, how did today go? Today was reasonably tranquil, but bike racing in the Basque Country is still hard. I just had a puncture at the bottom of the last climb, and then was just like, that’s it; my race is done and rolled in with the gruppetto. I think that is going to be my race. I am either going to be gruppetto or breakaway. The fans were incredible again.

My day? It was really hard, really hot. There are no tunnels in this place! It is just up or down. I had good legs today, but some guys had better legs.

It was another day at the Tour de France! Our new role is to be either in the front or the back and never in the middle. So today, we were in the back, but Neilson was in the front. The team worked really hard in the beginning for it to happen. We will keep pushing!