BLASI: I WAS NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE HERE
”I was alone when I crossed the finish line, I did not even know how many kilometres left I had.
”I was like, ‘oh hopefully I have just five to go,’ and then suddenly they said ‘no, you still have 22 to go’, and I was like ‘oh’ and I knew it was going to be a hard day in the front.
”Five minutes before I did the breakout, I was dropped.
”So I just came back, and I said ok, let’s give it a go, try to help the team, and then suddenly I found myself in the front.
”Since the beginning, I said to the team that I was struggling quite a bit with the positioning because it is my first race here in Ardennes, so I was a bit nervous, and it was nothing like I have done before.
”It is quite crazy, it is quite difficult to be in the front and that is actually the most important part, so I was struggling a bit.
”I was way far behind, so I was kind of being dropped, coming back, being dropped, coming back.
”At one point I said, ‘be at the front, if you can go in the breakaway, it will be better because then you will not have to fight for the position’.
”I don’t know actually right now [what it means to win] because I was not even supposed to be here, I just signed up yesterday for the race because we had some injuries and some sickness, so it was not even on my mind to be racing here, so I need to take a breath and accept what happened.”
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