The tour started, and the entire peloton was immediately surprised. “Glad this ride is over,” said top favorite Pogacar

There were High Fives with the Dutch team Visma-Lease a Bike (Lab), cursing was done by the Belgian Soudal Quick-Step, and title defender Tadej Pogacar sighed that he was happy that the day was over.

The first stage of the Tour de France would be a day for the Sprinters, and there was a Sprinter as the winner with the Belgian Jasper Philipsen from Alpecin-Deceuninck. But furthermore it went on the Façade de l’Esplanade in Lille on everything except the Sprinters on Saturday afternoon afterwards.

Completely against expectations, the classification riders made a battle of it with the help of the wind that drove over the northern French countryside. The conclusion after almost four hours of cycling: for stage candidates Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) and Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) can already start the chase after a day.

Beforehand, there was a fear of large falls. For the first time since 2020, a flat course was ready for the first Tour stage that could handle sprinters and their teams. With the reward of the yellow jersey in the offing, it was expected that it would be stuck and pushed in the peloton in fighting for the best positioning for the mass sprint towards the finish. In the past, this almost always led to massive crashes.

This time it was not too bad, although there was a painful collision between the French Benjamin Thomas and Mattéo Vercher, who went to the hole in their struggle for the first mountain jersey. In an extreme attempt to grab a dot on the climb tiled with cobblestones to Mont Cassel, Thomas pushed his bike diagonally across the line, lost control of his rear wheel and thus not only herself, but also cher. The latter could only raise his hands in stupid surprise. Thomas grabbed the mountain jersey.

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Faders

Then the game started with the wind, which blew from the northwest with wind force 4. Towards hamlets with names such as Steenvoorde, Méteren and Nieppe, the wind on wide, straight roads was given plenty of room to tear the peloton into pieces. A number of times there seemed to be fans, but the riders did not want to lose sight of each other. This way everyone prepared for a mass sprint.

That was counted outside of Visma-Lab. The team with the Danish leader Jonas Vingegaard, who drives around in France this year without Dutch, turned on the last straight strip of asphalt, and suddenly there was a hole. Pogacar was alert and sat with the front group of more than thirty men, just like Philipsen and his teammate Mathieu van der Poel. Behind it, the difference with the rest of the peloton quickly rose to half a minute. On the line, the damage for Evenepoel and Roglic was 39 seconds.

“This was the plan, attacking twenty kilometers before the finish,” said Matteo Jorgenson of Visma-Lab satisfied while cycling at the Rollerbank at the team bus. “There we came between the buildings today and we had to deal with Zijwind, and we managed to sit together and accelerate together.”

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On Friday, the team had explored and realized the last sixty kilometers of the stage that if there could be fans somewhere in the final, it would be at that point of the course. “Then you better take the initiative yourself than someone else does,” said team leader Grischa Niermann.

Kopman Jonas Vingegaard – 1.75 meters in size, 58 kilos heavy – did not hide behind his teammates and turned a head in the wind a number of times. “The main goal was to stay out of trouble, and then it is completely beautiful if you can create problems for others yourself. We succeeded.”

‘Stupid seconds’

Even the teams that did go were surprised by the action of the Dutch team. “We didn’t expect it anymore,” said Kaden Groves, teammate of winner Jasper Philipsen. “But in the end it turned out to our advantage.” Due to the split in the peloton, Philipsen was relieved in one fell swoop from his main competitors Tim Merlier and Jonathan Milan, who did not go with the leading group. He then sprinted to the victory without threat.

The losers of the day blamed themselves. “We let ourselves be asleep. This was a collective error from the team and we lose stupid seconds,” Evenepoel told the French news agency AFP. The Belgian escaped worse damage when he sent the roadside and barely could prevent a fall. Roglic quickly disappeared into the team bus afterwards and no longer showed himself.

Defending champion Tadej Pogacar from UAE Team Emirates-XRG was comfortable with it and called it a hectic day. “Just when we thought it wasn’t going to happen anymore, we still had to work,” the Slovenian panted. “It will be an important week until the first day of rest.”

In the coming days, the riders are at least four stages with many steep climbs, ideal for punchers such as Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert. But classification riders such as Pogacar and Evenepoel can do this too, and now that the battle for the yellow has already begun, it promises to be an unpredictable week. “The first battle was won,” said Jorgenson of Visma-Lab, “but the war has not yet been decided.”

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