Asgreen narrowly loses to Mohoric, but actually wanted some rest: "Sometimes things don't go the way you expect"

Kasper Asgreen narrowly missed out on winning his second stage in a row in the Tour de France. In a photo finish, the Danish rider lost the nineteenth stage to Matej Mohoric, after claiming victory in the eighteenth stage. Today, being in the breakaway was not even in the original plan for the cyclist.

On Eurosport he explained how he actually wanted to take it easy. "I didn't have good legs, and it wasa really tough stage right off the bat. I felt quite empty after Thursday's challenging stage. The plan was to just stay in the peloton on Friday, but that was very difficult. When eight riders took off, the peloton wasn't completely satisfied, so the pace remained very high," said Asgreen, who had his teammate Julian Alaphilippe in that group of eight.

Then came a crucial moment in the race - the intermediate sprint. Asgreen saw an opportunity to reach his teammate. "After the intermediate sprint, it was quite clear to me that a group was going to bridge the gap with the leading group, and in that case, I wanted to be part of it. I decided to make the move but stay in the slipstream. Suddenly, I found myself at the front of the race. At that point, I just had to go for it."

Asgreen: "Sometimes things don't go the way you expect"

And that's exactly what Asgreen did. Just before the final categorized climb of the day, the Côte d'Ivory, he made a move and got away. He was joined by Matej Mohoric and Ben O'Connor. The three built up a good lead but had to fight for every second, as the group behind them was also pushing hard. "Sometimes things don't go the way you expect them to at the beginning of the day. We rode away and formed a good group. It was great that we could keep going all the way to the finish," Asgreen said. As for losing the sprint, Asgreen didn't comment on that.