Opening Weekend Recap

The Tour de France has begun. The opening weekend was full of heat, hills, surprises, and disappointment (for me).

Stage One: The “hardest” opening stage in Tour de France history delivered strange racing. A strong-ish breakaway got away after a little under an hour of attacking. UAE seemed fairly interested in controlling it at first, then less so as more and more people attacked. But in the end, the breakaway should have been quite manageable. Jonas Abrahamsen, Matej Mohoric, Ion Izagirre, Frank van den Broek, Ryan Gibbons, and Valentin Madouas are all pretty strong, but should not have been a match for the Tour peloton on rolling terrain.

However, the heat (almost 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or 30-plus Celsius) was probably deterring any team in the bunch from riding too hard. The gap went out to well over six minutes before UAE finally pulled hard up the middle climb of the day, the Barbotto. That’s the one I highlighted in my preview as the one on which the most differences could be made. That knifed a lot of time off of the breakaway’s lead, but then UAE went off of the front again and Romain Bardet attacked out of the peloton with 50k to go. At the time, I dismissed the move as foolish French aggression in their home race. But he bridged all the way up to the breakaway and began using his teammate Frank VDB as a satellite rider (Frank, by the way, is a 23-year-old Dutch rider with no results to indicate that he could perform this way in the Tour de France) before the Frenchman, in his final Tour, began rolling turns with his teammate and the remainder of the breakaway faded away.

At this point, with 45 minutes of racing remaining, two exhausted, non-Galactico DSM (of all teams) riders in the lead by less than two minutes, the choice from the peloton, but UAE even without hindsight, should have been clear. Go full gas with your strong team, hunt down the leaders, try to drop the rest of the men who can sprint (and the terrain was certainly suitable for that, with two climbs remaining), and perhaps most importantly, put Jonas Vingegaard, the only man capable of competing with Pogacar in top shape, but whose form is completely unknown, under pressure from the gun.

But UAE didn’t do it, which annoyed me greatly, even in hindsight. Visma surprisingly began pacing (not too hard) likely to keep things in control and disincentivize UAE from going ballistic. Ben Healy of EF attacked from the peloton but quickly found himself in the chasse patates, unable to gain enough ground on the leaders. Bardet and van den Broek got over the last climb and railed the descent, fighting for every second.

Healy eventually dropped back to the peloton and began helping the whole remaining EF team chase, ostensibly for Alberto Bettiol, the newly-crowned Italian Champion, to win a reduced bunch sprint. But with the group three-dozen strong and only likely to swell on the false-flat downhill, and Wout van Aert present, Bettiol did not have a chance to win. With Wout the favorite from the group now, Visma sent Matteo Jorgenson to take some pulls, but not Jonas. Trek also took some pulls for Mads Pedersen.

With the gap under a minute with 10k to ride, a super-fast false-flat, straight road to the line, a slight headwind, two cooked non-rouleurs out front, and plenty of big engines in the peloton taking pulls, there was no doubt for me that Bardet and VDB would get caught. But the fucking camera motorcycle was driving far too close in front of them for egregious amounts of time. That offers breakaway riders a massive artificial draft that is not supposed to happen at any time in any race, let alone in the Tour de France. But with a Frenchman in the lead, one has to insist on questioning the motives of the motorbike driver and the race commissaries.

Needless to say, Bardet ended up winning the stage with Frank in his wheel, five seconds ahead of a flying peloton led home by Wout van Aert. Pogacar took fourth, showing how incredibly quick he can be even on the flat. Maxim van Gils sprinted to fifth (two spots ahead of Pedersen), confirming that he indisputably has the level to win stages in this Tour de France from a breakaway… but not from the GC group. No GC riders lost time with 46 guys comprising the peloton at the end of the race.

Romain Bardet, in his final Tour de France, took his fourth stage win but first-ever yellow jersey. That’s a nice story, but I didn’t care for it. The stage was anti-climactic with a lack of GC action and in my opinion, the motorcycle completely changed the outcome of the race. That is inexcusable.

The other questions that need to be asked are: Why the hell can’t Jonas take a pull for Wout on the flat? Just two pulls from the Dane would have gotten Wout the stage win and the yellow jersey. You cannot convince me that two pulls would have had any impact on Jonas going forward. If anything, the training effect probably would have helped him. Wout is in better shape than expected, and with all of the work he has done for Jonas over the years, he deserves some help in return. And UAE, what the hell were you thinking not making a single effort in that group with your domestiques? Pogacar would have finished second if the DSM duo had been caught, and that would have given him six bonus seconds over Jonas. I’m sorry, but Almeida, Ayuso, and Yates need to work for Pogi especially if there is no risk of time loss for them. They also had Sivakov in the group! Unbelievable.

As you can probably discern, Stage One was a huge letdown for me. But I had high hopes for the next day.

Stage Two: The breakaway of about a dozen decent riders (a weak group by TDF standards, but that’s still pretty strong) was given a 9:30 advantage with just 60k to ride on the dawdling peloton on another 90-degree day in Italy. Victor Campanaerts began pulling hard for Lotto, ostensibly to set up Maxim van Gils for a stage win and/or yellow or white jersey. At the time, I thought it wasn’t the worst idea, but in hindsight it was foolish. It was doubtful that he was going to be able to compete with the GC favorites on the last climb, or in the sprint versus Pogacar if he somehow survived a 5-minute watts per kilogram test. And Campanaerts ran out of gas before he got the gap to a manageable level, so it was fruitless anyway.

On the penultimate ascent of the San Luca climb, Visma set a defensive pace (later estimated by Karlis Ozols of Lanterne Rouge at 6.6w/kg for 6:22) to deter UAE from launching it. That was a brilliant strategy that succeeded. The peloton was still large when it summitted the hill .

Up front, on the flat segment between the climbs, Kevin Vauquelin, Abrahamsen, and Nelson Oliveira attacked the breakaway and opened up a nearly one minute gap before they hit the final climb. It was a dream scenario for the young Frenchman (who finished second in Fleche Wallonne this year) and he did his work, easily dropping the two rouleurs on a 15-percent grade and soloing away to win the stage. Abrahamsen took an excellent second place, and Quentin Pacher finished third. The breakaway, which did not include many great climbers, would claim the top nine places on the stage, giving a good indication of how easily the peloton took the stage until the final climb.

As the GC group hit the San Luca for the second time, Adam Yates pedaled up to the front of the group and started pushing big watts. The group was already rather small when Pogacar launched a thermonuclear attack on a shallower section. To my shock, Jonas Vingegaard snap-closed the move and the two immediately had 15 seconds on everyone else. Vingegaard began trading pulls with Pogi on the descent and flat finish, but Remco Evenepoel trucked his way back to the Big Two with Richard Carapaz, of all people, in his wheel. Carapaz outsprinted them all but I wouldn’t read much into that form-wise, because he was in Remco’s wheel for a while saving energy.

The GC standings after the stage saw Pogacar going into the yellow jersey on the same time as Remco, Jonas, and Carapaz. A group of GC riders including Roglic and Bardet ended up losing 21 seconds to those four.

Most people drew the same conclusions that I did from this stage: Jonas is way stronger than anticipated, Pogacar is also very strong, and therefore we have another barnburner on our hands. The two smashed the record on the San Luca climb, doing an estimated 7.89 w/kg for 5:27 (also according to Ozols), but could have gone far faster if they had gunned it from the bottom. With those two in this sort of shape, we can expect more climbing records to fall as this Tour progresses.

Remco is probably a bit better than I expected, Carapaz is way better, and Roglic is in either bad shape or just had a seriously rough day. We’ll find out on Stage Four.

I wish the opening weekend had seen GC riders winning, but I suppose it’s nice for the smaller teams to get some time in the sun.

The Tour is on.