I’ll start this piece by covering the remaining stages from the first week, then analyze the week as a whole and how the top guys might be feeling.
Stage Seven: The all-important wine trial (the French say the time trial is the race of truth, and of course the Romans had a saying “in vino, veritas” so it is all the more fitting that the Tour de France would have its week one individual time time trial through vineyards. That being said, I don’t think many of the riders indulged).
The day before the race, I had gone with the consensus pick of Remco for a victory over Pogacar, though I thought the margin might be closer than most were anticipating. The morning of the TT, I decided to throw out a hot take on Twitter predicting Pogacar would win ahead of Remco by 10 seconds, with Roglic third on 35 seconds, Ayuso fourth on 50 and Jonas fifth on 1:00. It was certainly wishful thinking on my part, but that’s what a hot take is meant to be.
As Grand Tour time trials tend to go these days, especially with no Filippo Ganna in the race, the hot seat was occupied by riders with no shot at the victory for hours and hours, because all of the top GC riders were starting at the very end. That being said, a strong Victor Campanaerts did a very respectable effort to get into the lead and held it until the Big Four began their rides.
Roglic was first to start as he sat fifth in the GC. He did not ride the climb very quickly and despite having what appeared to be solid time gains on Campanaerts, it was clear that it would not be enough to compete with the biggest guns still to start.
Ayuso then went off and to my surprise, was immediately shit, losing time to Campanaerts and Roglic from the gun.
Then it was the turn of Jonas, who started out flying, immediately gaining time on Roglic on the flat. It looked like he was going to do another alien performance like last year.
Remco Evenepoel, in the white jersey rather than his World Championship skinsuit, began his effort with visible aggression, clearly in search of the stage win and was slightly ahead of Jonas on the flat, which would be expected.
Finally, the maillot jaune, Tadej Pogacar, sprinted out of the start house with designs on an upset stage victory and GC gains. He was the fastest of anybody through the first few kilometers, giving me plenty of copium to believe that he could win the TT.
Roglic began to battle back on the descent, while Ayuso did not. Jonas began to pay for his aggressive pacing plan. Remco was strong but not technically proficient in the corners on the descent. Pogacar seemed to be faiding a little bit, and lost time to Remco on the upper slopes of the climb and rolling plateau that followed, but cornered well on the descent to gain some of it back.
On the flat bit to finish Roglic did well to limit what could have been large losses, Ayuso continued to ride himself out of the conversation, Jonas died, Remco just faded slightly, and Pogacar faded a little bit more.
In the end, the standings looked like: 1). Remco 2). Pogacar +12 3). Roglic +34 4). Jonas +37 5). Campanaerts +52
You can see how the four strongest riders in the world are even the strongest on a mostly-flat individual time trial in which the winning average speed was 52.58 kilometers per hour. That’s crazy. I love it. These guys are all well under 70 kilograms and rocket up mountains, yet they are also so much better than everybody else even on flat terrain.
The first reaction has to be that Remco has well and truly arrived. He has now won a stage of the biggest race in the world, stages in all of the Grand Tours, and as we will see below, is in contention for the victory of the Tour de France. It’s lovely to see such an otherworldly talent, who had a life-threatening crash in 2020 in his second year as a professional, make it to the top and confirm his potential.
The GC situation after the ITT was 1). Pogacar 2). Remco +33 3). Jonas + 1:15 4). Roglic +1:36 5). Ayuso +2:16 6). Almeida +2:17
Pogacar lost a bit of time to Remco, but gained on everybody else. Pogi’s lead on the Belgian is not comfortable, and I’ve been going back and forth on whether Remco is truly a threat for the final yellow jersey. But with so many mountain stages to come, unless the form curves shift dramatically, Pogacar can take many more minutes on Remco, which he will want to do with the final GC stage being another ITT.
The gap to Roglic seems comfortable based on how the elder Slovenian looks going uphill. Rogla did well to limit his losses in this TT, but his odds to win this TDF have to be about 100/1. He can fight for the podium, but it is near-impossible that the three guys ahead of him crash or collapse. It is also possible that two or even three of UAE’s climbing domestiques are going to beat him when the race hits the real mountains. Roglic will soldier on as he always does, though.
That leaves us with Jonas Vinegaard, sitting in third, only 1:15 behind Pogacar. I wouldn’t be super happy to be either man after this time trial. Jonas keeps saying he expected to lose more time after almost every stage, but that’s getting old. Will he say that after stage 20 when Pogi has a five-minute lead? I kid, but at some point you need to gain time rather than limit your losses. Pogacar, meanwhile, did well to take 27 seconds on Jonas on this stage, but would have been wanting more time on other days, specifically the first two. 1:15 is nice, but as Jonas says, the Dane took 7:30 in two stages last year. You just never know.
I included Almeida in this GC snapshot because he and Ayuso are one second apart and there is plenty of speculation that their potential infighting will harm their leader’s chances at the overall victory. I’m slightly worried about that, but I think the team management and Pogacar himself will put a halt to it quickly.
Stage Eight: The hilly day, just like last year’s stage eight which was won by Mads Pedersen. Sadly, the morning of this year’s stage, the Big Dane abandoned the race as he was suffering too much from his crash a few days ago. That left one less climby sprinter whose team would control the race, and one more team that ought to have made efforts to go into the breakway.
The race began with a bit of aggression from EF, which sent Bissegger and Powless up the road with Jonas Abrahamsen. EF clearly had laid the blueprints for a breakaway stage win, while the Norwegian was hunting KOM points to add to his lead in the polka-dot jersey competition.
But three men were not going to make it, so EF sat up and then attacked from the peloton with Bettiol leading out Healy on a five-minute 7 percent climb (which is a perfect launch pad to form a strong breakaway for this terrain). The peloton was flat-out with lots of dangerous riders jumping out of the bunch to either neutralize the move or try to join it. Even Pogacar was seemingly attacking.
Maxim Van Gils was incredibly strong as expected, but his presence at the front was negative. I was hoping Lotto would play his card today from the breakaway, but because he is such a good puncheur, not many guys wanted to form a break with him. His team was using him to demoralize attacks so that they could control the race for a sprint with Arnaud De Lie, which is a pretty good strategy.
They were successful, and soon Abrahamsen was on his own and the peloton began noodling along over six minutes behind. The Norwegian is strong but not that strong, and the peloton did what it needed to do to bring him back. Biniam Girmay won his second stage ahead of Philipsen and De Lie. There were no gaps.
Stage Nine: The much-anticipated gravel stage around Troyes somehow punched above its weight. It was a legendary battle that I couldn’t begin to fully break down in this piece. But I’ll give some of it a go.
After a brutal battle for the breakaway which included Derek Gee pushing over 400 watts for the first hour of the race (!), a group of about a dozen riders including Gee and Oier Lazkano with two teammates got away.
The peloton never let them get more than about 2:30, but they never managed to reel them in, with the exception of when Remco attacked with about 77k to go and was caught by Pogacar and Jonas. The yellow and white jersey rolled turns but Jonas refused to pull. The trio did catch the break in short order, but Jonas’ negative racing put a halt to the cooperation, and the three all sat up and went back to the peloton.
Pogacar attacked sometimes with his team, sometimes without it, on just about every gravel sector, but with no real hills remaining, Visma just controlled him and reeled him back every time. Despite not gaining a single second on anybody who mattered, it was breathtaking to see how strong Pogacar was on this stage. I don’t see how he loses this Tour de France…
Anyway, a group including Mathieu van der Poel and Biniam got a gap on the peloton and started working to try to catch the breakaway, which had been gassing it for about four hours at that point, doing huge watts almost the whole time. MVDP is not in great form, as he barely made a dent in the gap.
Eventually, Jasper Stuyven attacked in the final few kilometers from the breakaway and I thought he had it, but the group somehow cooperated and Alexey Lutsenko did a death pull to finish him off, ruining his own race in the process. Ben Healy attacked before Derek Gee went over the top, but in the final sprint, Alex Aranburu went too early (his leader Lazkano flatted out of the break *heartbreak emoji*) and led out Pidcock, but it was a shocking win for Anthony Turgis of TotalEnergies!
Pidcock took second and Gee third. But the two highlights of the day were definitely Turgis’ huge upset and Pogacar’s ruthless attacks from the peloton.
On this, the first rest day of the 2024 Tour de France, I’m thinking about the Siege of Orleans as I said I would be, and how grateful we should all be that such a spectacle as the Tour de France even gets to take place.
But I’m also locked into the race. The battle we all hoped for is coming to fruition; the Big Four are clearly the best riders in the Tour. Of course, I am rooting hard for Pogacar to win. But I also hope we see a good race and that Roglic shows some life.
Week two should be mostly pretty uneventful from a GC perspective. Save your viewing energy and time for the third week.
Jamie
Puncheur 
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