Laurent Pichon
Sport director
A 20-second gap is always annoying! We knew that the start was technical, and we had several crashes with Clémence Latimier and Thibault Guernalec, who was forced to leave the race. Kévin negotiated this section well, but unfortunately it was in the next sector, a left-left and in a time trial position, that he slipped off the front. He picked himself up quickly, but he had lost speed and, above all, it's not easy to regain it. We knew that Kévin was behind, and that made it a bit difficult to manage his time trial. He pushed really hard on the uphill section where he made up time on everyone except Bruno Armirail in the final, who made up time on him. You can never tell where you lose a race, and what it would have been like without that crash, but maybe the missing twenty seconds are there. Kévin is disappointed tonight, and so is the ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team. But it can make him even stronger for Sunday. It's going to be a race for strong men, and Kévin is in good form. We're going to do everything we can to run a full race on Sunday.
