Costa's words after today:
"Hello my friends, today I confess I had no desire to write this but you deserve my attention in both good or bad days and here I am with the promised daily note. Today was a bad day for Movistar. We lost the second place of Valverde, the team's general classification and my 9th place in the GC. One day we had almost everything and now we have almost nothing. Cycling is of course unpredictable and a simple flat can completely change the race scenario.
Missing about 90km to the finish when it all happened. Someone touched behind the wheel of Valverde, causing a flat at an inopportune moment. The team responded immediately in support of our leader and I also got called to work right away. I let myself stay behind to help take forward Alejandro. The whole team was united in working to join the group in front, but unfortunately all this effort was not successful. The Omega Pharma-Quick Step, Europcar and Belkin were some of the teams that pulled in front preventing us to get in the group, and were successful. We ended up crossing the line about 10 minutes after Contador who won today almost 1 minute over Chris Froome, still the yellow jersey.
Nairo Quintana is now our highest ranked mate overall in 8th Place, Valverde went down to 16th position and I am now 18 @ 14'22 "on Froome.
It was a day of bad luck and sorry for the team but we will not give up. The chances of Valverde to be back in the first place are almost nil but there is still almost half a Tour to do.
These were the news of the day, hopefully better luck for what remains of this Tour de France. A big hug and thank you for being by my side even when times are not so good. "
Sad.