Luke Tuckwell: "In honour of my sister"

June 12 ^th 2026 - 17:49

"We couldn’t believe the situation. On these big roads, we were actually expecting a really big fight for the breakaway, like the other day, when it took an hour and a half. This really big group went. I saw a few Uno-X guys jumping as well and I remembered what they did in Basque Country on the final day. I was there and I was suffering so I saw this as an opportunity. We had the perfect combination of teams and they just smashed it all day.

I knew pretty quickly that I was the closest on GC in that group, and I was only a minute down. But I tried to not spend too much energy thinking about it. On the valley, the guy went from 2 minutes and half to 3,  and then three and a half… And then I started to think about it. And when we got to the final climb with four minutes, I was: ‘Alright, now let’s a time trial to the top’.

Maxim Van Gils and I both knew how strong we were and the situation played perfectly for us. Torres and Johannessen spent energy attacking each other and then I could bridge across. It was an easy decision to ride all in for him until the finish.

Last year, I had the pink jersey of the Giro Next Gen and it was a really nice moment in my life, so to have the jersey in a big one week stage race, I don’t really quite believe it. All day, I was thinking of my little sister, who died in September last year. I really wanted to do it for her today. Those last few kilometres, I was really suffering, but thinking of her. This yellow jersey is in honour of her."