One week ago, Movistar held a press conference on the first rest day of the Tour. Back then, Alejandro Valverde was the clear leader, sitting in second place overall, and Nairo Quintana confirmed his loyalty to the Spaniard. After the echelon-ridden stage 13 (where Valverde lost 9:54 minutes) the roles have been reversed.

Nairo Quintana is now the team’s general classification hope. The young Colombian is currently in sixth place, 5:47 minutes behind yellow jersey Chris Froome (Team Sky), but only 1:22 behind a podium spot. On yesterday’s stage finishing on the Mont Ventoux, he was the first of the GC favourites to attack, and finished only 29 seconds behind stage winner Froome. Quintana has also regained the lead in the youth classification, and now wants to defend the white jersey.

“I'm going into this last week with tranquility,” he says. “The team is happy with my performance so far and they aren’t putting any pressure on me; we’ll just take it day by day. I'm young, and the team is concerned I could have an off-day and lose it all.”

“My legs are feeling tired; we’ve done 15 days of high-intensity racing already. My first goal is to recover well every day, defend my place in the overall classification and keep the white jersey. Winning a stage or getting onto the podium has a lower priority compared to that.”

This sounds surprisingly defensive from Quintana, especially as he has tried long-range attacks on two different occasions now. And the climber qualifies: “The main goal is to keep up with the others as long as possible; but if I feel good I’ll certainly try to make up some time. We’ve ridden offensively until now, and we’ll continue that way.”

Alejandro Valverde was looking forward instead of dwelling on the stage that cost him a possible podium place: “I wasn't as lucky as I would have liked to be, but we still have reasons to be happy, he said. “Nairo is still in the race; he’s looking good and has a week full of mountains to shine. If you look at the profiles and the climbs, it's the hardest week of the Tour.”

“My own goal is to win a stage now, but Nairo has a podium place within reach. That would be very important for the team. The Alpe d’Huez stage could be good stage for me – it’s a very hard climb, and if breakaway riders want to win it they have to be very strong. It’s an idea.”

Valverde is impressed with his teammate: “We could see yesterday that Nairo is very strong. He attacked with 15 km to go and almost managed to stay with Froome to the finish. But we also saw that Froome isn’t satisfied with having the yellow jersey – it looks like he wants to win every mountaintop finish.”

“We can’t say the Tour is over until we are in Paris, or at least until after Saturday’s stage. Right now, Froome is clearly the strongest rider, but in the week ahead one bad day can make you lose a lot of time. But it will be very difficult to beat him.”

Asked whether he would now target the Vuelta, Valverde was noncommittal: “It was on my calendar before the Tour, and I still intend to ride it. But I won’t hold anything back during this Tour. We’re in a great position to get one of us on the podium, and we can’t miss that chance.”