“It was a question of tenths of a second,” explained Contador. “I was going to the left in a relatively normal way when someone snagged me and jerked me to the left. I’ve totally broken the front wheel and gotten a good smack.”
                     
Quickly, Stangelj gave him his bike and Alberto tried to reconnect with the peloton. The crash happened very close to the last 3 kilometers, and at the finish line the judges determined that the peloton had already passed that mark, so even though Contador managed to bridge on his own, he would have been given the time of the group that crossed 17 seconds behind the winner anyway.
 
Contador complained about the hard knock. “The problem is a blow to the muscle, that’s what can bring down the level of my performance, although I hope to be able to start tomorrow.” About the gap, he said that it was “a pity to have gotten left back, mainly for my team, because we were at the front all day and we were paying attention every second.”
Alberto Contador now hopes “to analyze the situation in the general, but the truth is that I’m not worried about the 17 seconds that the front group took, but rather the consequences of the crash. It would have been better not to lose time, but the most important thing is seeing how I recover.”