Alberto Contador took his first win of the season when he arrived solo at the top of the Alto do Malhao in the Volta ao Algarve queen stage. We have already posted several reactions and have gathered a few more below.

Jose Azevedo (sports director Katusha whose best rider was Simon Spilak in 13th)

“Our goal today was to keep our nice positions in GC for Sergei [Chernetskii] and Simon, or hopefully to move up a bit. We didn’t succeed, but we tried. We did a recon of this stage last Tuesday. From that we knew the important moves would have to happen in the last 40 km between the two ascents of the Malhão. That’s why we sent Maxim Belkov in the attack on that moment.”

Alex Sans Vega (sports director NetApp-Endura whose best rider was Tiago Machado in 5th)

“Today, our plan was in two parts. First of all, we wanted to be in the group, because we expected that it would be a large group. Paul [Voss] set out to do that, because it was also good preparation for the upcoming classics. The team concentrated completely on Tiago in the final stretch. He knows the mountain and always rode very well in the past few years. Even though Tiago was hoping for a better result today, I am very satisfied with fifth place. You only have to look at the names that finished ahead of him to know that we can be very optimistic as we head to the next races.

“We are expecting a mass sprint tomorrow. Daniel [Schorn] has already proven his form in the first stage by taking eighth place, and therefore we want to at the front again tomorrow."

Sergey Firsanov (Rusvelo, 10th +0.16)

“There was a long breakaway, as normal, and it was duly controlled by the teams of the leaders in the general standings. When it was successfully chased down, a series of attacks broke the peloton apart, and we stood the selection into the first group. Riding with stars is a very important experience. We see where they excel; we can keep up with them most of the time and lose contact only when they start their really hard decisive acceleration. We’ve got a lot of respect for them, but there is nothing to be afraid of. Let’s keep in mind that it’s the first race of the season for us, and we hope to get closer and closer.”

Ilnur Zakarin (Rusvelo, 15th, +0.23)

“I’d like to focus attention again on the way the team rides. I’ve never seen RusVelo so strong and well-organized. They gave me and Sergey an excellent lead-out before the mountains. I tried my leg in a breakaway attempt on the second to last climb, but the pack never let me go. I feel much better as a climber now, having lost five kilos in the off-season.

Yesterday we rode a race to remember, I’ve never taken part in a time trial as fast as that. It was downhill most of the time and we had a very strong back wind on top of that. I’m a lightweight time trialist, so this type of a race is not really my cup of tea, but it was fun with the current speed around 60 km an hour. It’s a pity I didn’t use a chainring bigger than my 54, this was not really enough. “