Michal Kwiatkowski wins Tour de France stage 18 to bring relief for Ineos

Emotions were running high at the Tour de France as a tearful Michal Kwiatkowski of Ineos Grenadiers took his first Grand Tour victory, while the overall leader Primoz Roglic asked fans to think of him as a “nice person”.

Kwiatkowski was effectively gifted the stage 18 win in La Roche-sur-Foron by his teammate Richard Carapaz, the reigning Giro d’Italia champion, after the pair left their final breakaway companion Pello Bilbao (Bahrain–McLaren) on the approach to the final climb, across the Plateau des Glieres, and rode on together to the finish.

Related: Tour de France 2020: Kwiatkowski leads Ineos one-two on stage 18 – as it happened

An overwhelmed Kwiatkowski, a past world road-race champion and winner of Milan-San Remo, paid tribute to Carapaz’s generosity and to what he called the “greatest team in cycling”. The 30-year-old said: “That was some day. I can’t describe how grateful I am to the whole team and to Richard. I will never forget it.

“You get some nice moments in cycling but that was a new experience. I had goosebumps for the last few kilometres because I knew our gap was so big, we were going to make it. We really enjoyed those last kilometres.”

Kwiatkowski, a key player in the Tour successes of Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas, added that he couldn’t compare his stage win with any other victories due to the extraordinary circumstances. “Even with this pandemic, there were people out, shouting and screaming. It was super emotional, it was incomparable. I don’t know if it’s the magic of the Tour or the way we did it, but we definitely put on a show.”

The stage win, and Carapaz’s taking of the lead in the King of the Mountains competition, lifted the gloom hanging over the British team after the defending champion Egan Bernal abandoned on Wednesday morning with back and knee problems.

“Hopefully Egan will be all right,” Kwiatkowski said. “I’m not a doctor, I’m not a physio. I saw he was struggling, I saw he was fighting big-time. I think he was really sad when he was leaving the race and hopefully, he enjoyed watching that.

“We tried everything we could in the last three days to be in the breakaway and finally today we had the best legs ever. It was hard for us to change our objectives and I’m just really thankful to Richard. I will do everything to work for him now.”

The race leader Primoz Roglic meanwhile was also feeling demonstrative. Asked how he hoped Tour fans would think of him, he replied: “Most of all, as a nice person, I think that is the most important thing. Hopefully I am nice to everyone and the people will just like me.”

On the road, though, he seemed as ruthless as ever as he and his Jumbo-Visma team smothered any challenges on another gruelling mountain stage that had been thought of as a potential trap for the race leader. “We had control for the whole day,” Roglic said, “so it was another good day for us. I have tried to enjoy it, but there will be more time to enjoy it after the Tour. There are still some days to go so we need to maintain our focus.” One disappointment for Roglic was an announcement from Tour organisers that a director of his Jumbo-Visma team, Merijn Zeeman, was being kicked out of the race for insulting an official during a bike check.

In the race, the only significant challenge to Roglic’s hegemony came from Mikel Landa and his Bahrain-McLaren team, much as it had 24 hours earlier on the brutal stage to the Col de la Loze. The Spaniard accelerated on the final climb and briefly moved ahead, but it was not enough to dislodge Roglic, although it did put Landa’s rivals for a top-five finish in trouble.

Related: Roglic extends Tour lead on queen stage as Bernal exit adds to Brailsford woes

Adam Yates, of Mitchelton-Scott, Rigoberto Urán (EF-Education First) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) were all dropped on the climb to the Glieres as Landa sought to move up in GC on the gravel section of the ascent. “It was our last opportunity,” Landa said, after deposing Yates and moving into fifth overall. “We had our team at the front and it’s just a shame we couldn’t do any better. Jumbo-Visma’s pace was just too high and as a consequence we couldn’t go any faster.”

But it was Kwiatkowski’s day and, as he spoke at length, the Pole proved as eloquent off the bike as he had been on it. “A lot of people are saying that we miss Nico Portal in the car,” he said of the much-missed sports director who died in the spring. “We miss him a lot. But whatever we are, successful or not successful, we always remember him. I know he would have enjoyed today. We are inspired by him.”