Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana finished 3rd and 9th in a beautiful display of strength from the Movistar team during the first Pyrenean stage at the Tour de France. Now leading the teams classification, the young riders' competition and sitting in 3rd overall, the team was highly satisfied with the outcome of the day's events.

Team Sky were of course the great winners of today's first Pyrenean stage at the Tour de France but if another team challenged the Brits for the honour, it was certainly Movistar. The Spanish squad delivered a beautiful performance throughout the day and placed both Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana inside the top 10.

Quintana had attacked already on the day's first climb, the Port de Pailheres, and had started the final climb to Ax-3-Domaines with a 20-second gap on the main group. Having been reeled in with 9km to go, he still managed to finish 9th while team leader Valverde was the best of the rest behind the Sky duo of Chris Froome and Richie Porte, finishing 3rd in the stage and now occupying a similar position on GC.

Valverde admitted that he had had no chance to respond to Froome when he accelerated with 5km still to go.

"When Froome went away, I chose to ride on my own pace - I knew it was better for me," he said. "I was already at 190bpm before the attack, so that meant I had energy to keep going, because it wasn't easy to keep that effort for a long time."

Valverde revealed that Quintana had attacked in an attempt to break Sky's rhythm.

" I told Nairo to attack into the Pailhères because I saw him doing well and knew that he would make the Sky work harder - he proved to be really strong," he explained. "There's still a long way to go in the Tour and we're close, so we can't rule out anything. There's still a lot to be won or lost."

The Pyrenees are still not done as the riders head into another tough day in the saddle tomorrow. The stage finishes with a 30km descent and so Valverde does not expect the stage to pan out like today's.

"Tomorrow's stage will be different to today's, because it's not a mountain-top finish - while being a really hard day, it finished at the bottom of the valley after the last port," he said. "The important thing from this very moment is recovering and tackling tomorrow's stage at 100%. Froome is superior at this moment, really difficult to beat, but the Tour is a long race. I'm happy to be sitting in 3rd place, into the provisional podium, with such strong riders behind."

Quintana had not raced since the Liege-Bastogne-Liege in April and so he was happy to see his legs respond so well early in the race.

"I'm satisfied with my stage," he said. "We have planned this morning to attack in Pailhères so I could help Alejandro out and disrupt Sky's work at the front, and despite the fact that I didn't have energy enough in the finale and they rode really strong, things were well with respect to that. I came into the race with no racing form, but I could gain it into the first stages and now I feel in perfect condition. The legs today were really good. I proved myself today I can ride with the top contenders in the mountains and hope to give it another try in this Tour de France. "

Quintana now takes over the lead in the youth classification and admitted that he had secretly targeted the coveted white jersey.

Wearing the white jersey is a really beautiful thing," he said. "Even though I didn't want to concede it initially, it was something I wanted to achieve, and now I hope to keep it all the way to Paris. Already since I was a child, I wanted to be at the Tour, and being able to shine makes me feel full of pride and joy. The support and messages from my family, my girlfriend, my friends and everyone in Colombia have helped me much, and this stage is dedicated to them."

Rui Costa also finished 12th in the stage and that allowed the Spanish team to take over the lead in the teams classification. You can follow their attempt to defend their positions as we have live coverage of the entire stage from 11.15 on CyclingQuotes.com/live.