His finger points straight to the sky carrying a message that needs no explanation: the victory is for Samuele Privitera, the young Italian rider who lost his life yesterday at the Giro della Valle d'Aosta.

"This was the first thing I read this morning, a heartbreaking news. I thought about Samuele in the last kilometers, I thought about how hard our sport can be, how terrible it can be, and this victory is entirely for his family."

Tadej Pogacar is still pedaling for recovery when he speaks about the tragedy that shook the cycling world yesterday. And he does so with sincere, spontaneous pain.

Then he talks about the race: "I liked this climb from the first time I tackled it during reconnaissance. In 2022, I hoped to reclaim the yellow jersey here, but things didn't go as I wanted. I erased that day, but recently more than one person talked to me about a possible revenge, and so it was. Today the team was perfect, Wellens did the work that Van Aert did for Vingegaard back then, but everyone was perfect and in the end we managed to gain a lot of ground."

And further: "The consequences of the fall, fortunately, were barely felt on the bike. I have a few more problems off the saddle, but that's normal. Now I need to focus on recovering because tomorrow we have another really challenging stage."

PRESS CONFERENCE.

The Slovenian also wanted to highlight the work done by his opponents trying to catch him while he was in the breakaway. In particular, he addressed Ben Healy, who today had to surrender his yellow jersey.

"Hats off to Ben Healy and his EF Education. They wanted to defend the yellow jersey and took their responsibilities. UNO-X also raced with determination in favor of Johannessen, I congratulate them."

Today, before the start, there were many doubts about Pogacar's health condition, as he had fallen and hit a sidewalk yesterday. However, the Slovenian did not suffer significant consequences and, as seen, raced without problems, managing to drop all his rivals.

"Yes, of course, I also had doubts because you never know how the body will react after a fall, but it didn't go that badly. It wasn't a bad crash. I feel discomfort in the hip only if I do acrobatics, but basically I'm just cycling, so there's no major issue."

For Pogacar and his team, everything went as planned and now they are even more optimistic about future stages.

"Today went according to our plans. We did a truly superb job, the team rode really well. Other teams also rode well because they had a spot in the general classification in mind, and it was a truly tough day for everyone. We had this stage in mind for a long time and we made it."

Visma-Lease a Bike was particularly offensive, but Pogacar and his team managed to keep the race perfectly under control.

"The entire stage was very tense, very difficult. In the flat sections, we were flying at super high speeds and the legs started to suffer. If you weren't mentally prepared for this start, it wasn't easy. Visma attacked the first climb with a strong pace and I saw that Matteo Jorgenson was struggling, wasn't having a great day. At that moment, maybe I changed my mind, one less to think about, so I had to focus only on Jonas. When Jhonatan pulled, it was more or less like at the Dauphiné, just full gas. When I saw there was no one behind me, I understood the road to the finish was still long, but the fans were incredible, they also helped me with their cheering."