Pro Tour Cycling’s Findings From The Opening 2 Stages of The Tour de France
There is always so much going on at the Tour de France, and sometimes some interesting stories that make an impact on the final result get lost along the way. For this reason, we’ll publish these relatively short articles on our findings. Keep in mind many of these findings are opinion based, and could end up meaning nothing in the end.
STAGE 1 TIME TRIAL IN COPENHAGEN
Stage 1 was a nightmare. If you’re one of the riders gearing up for the opening stage of the Tour de France and it stars pissing rain, everything changes. The guys are nervous to begin with, but add rain to the oil filled streets of a busy city like Copenhagen, and it becomes a nightmare real quick. We saw pre race favorites like Stefan Bissegger crash twice on course, Geraint Thomas run the time trial with his warm up vest on, and many others laying their bikes down on the tarmac. One word to describe the opening stage “Carnage.”
Pogacar was really fast, and took risks. The Pog’s approach to the opening stage was surprising. Given his win by over 5 minutes in last year’s Tour de France, you’d think that the defending champ would take a little bit of a conservative approach to the high risk opening stage. This tells us a few things. Firstly, Pog isn’t messing about, he’s in it to win it, and he’s on form. He came into the stage with the mentality of winning, and he wasn’t pivoting from that because of some rain. This shows laser focus, and an athlete that is on the top of his game. It also shows us that Pog respects the competition this year. There’s been a bunch of chatter from the other teams on how everyone as multiple leader options in their team, and that they plan to blow Pogacar’s team apart early on. Pogacar has obviously heard then rumors and he wasn’t prepared to give anyone a second in the TT.
Martinez lost a lot of time, but is going fast. Daniel Martinez has been working hard on his time trial game improving his fitness and spending a ton of time in the wind tunnel dialing in his position. Rumor is that the Colombian as gained over 700 meters this year on his 10 minute 300 watt wind tunnel test. That’s pretty impressive to say the least. However, Martinez lost nearly 45 seconds yesterday, and that is a lot of time in a 15 minute effort. The thing that people may not know about Martinez is that he’s bad in the rain. He struggles on technical downhills and especially in bad weather, so the 45 seconds loss doesn’t really mean the guy didn’t show up ready to compete here for the Tour title. Majority of the time he lost probably came down to the corners in the rain.
Wout van Aert is a sleeper! Wout is on top form no doubt, and given his performance in las years Tour de France where he won the ITT, Ventoux stage, and Champs Elysees it makes us think that Jumbo is her at the tour with 3 leaders instead of 2. The dutch squad says that they are here with Vingegaard and Roglic as leaders, but don’t sleep on Wout. The guy as been working all year on his climbing and we think that he could potentially be at this year’s Tour with some GC aspirations.
MVDP is in it. When is Van Der Poel not in the mix? A 5th place finish says MVDP is here, ready and looking to take the yellow jersey at some point here in the first week. He’ll have Wout van Aert to deal with, but he’s coming good and nobody is doubting that he’ll be able to pull that yellow jerseys on is shoulders early on.
Rigoburto Uran lost a lot of time. Overall it was a pretty shit day for EF Education Easy Post with their stage favorite Bisegger’s 2 crashes and then Rigo losing nearly 1:15 on the opening time trial. It’s difficult to see where a rider like Rigo makes this time up later on in the tour. Rigo is a rider that follows, follows, follows and doesn’t really go on the attack. Rigo will need to rely on the bad luck of other rides if he’s looking at finishing on the podium in Paris in 2022.
Specialized new TT Helmet got absolutely roasted by fans. Specialized launched this new TT helmet with some kind of built in head sleeve and some oversized lenses. Apparently it’s more aero, but it looks like shit and the fans were sure to let us know. Interestingly the stage winner Yves Lampaert opted for the older version of the helmet, which completely contradicts the statement that the helmet is faster. This is pretty typical of Specialized where they put stuff out, claim it’s better and just wait for everyone to start believing it. Eventually they always do..
Stage 2
Flat, windy, and a little bit stressful. It’s day 2 of a 3 week race, and it’s the first day in the punch for all of the riders. Bradley Wiggins said that the most stressful place in the race was in the team cars as the directors Ego’s were all inflated, and everyone in the caravan was battling for the front place. The riders were relatively relaxed given the magnitude of the stage with the yellow jersey being on the line.
Cross Winds: “The Bridge” we heard about the bridge all day, and 18km section that could pose a big threat in the cross winds. In the end, it didn’t disappoint. The chaos that started as soon as the guys hit the bridge was mental. The pace wasn’t insane, but nobody wanted to be caught out of position and so started the battling for position and crashes. Nobody wanted to line it out, and the bunch got crushed. The yellow jersey hit the deck, Rigo was caught up in a crash, etc etc. But then, it was like all the intensity left the group. Somebody made a call, everyone chilled out, and the group just slowed down.
EF’s on the MOVE. These guys want TV time, points, and a jersey. With a massive campaign leading into the tour regarding their Rapha Palace kit collab, they absolutely had to follow the noise up with some results. Give the disastrous stage 1, it was no surprise to see Magnus Cort go on attack early on making the days break and taking the KOM points.
Quickstep’s got a lot to prove. Yes, they took the win on stage one with Yves Lampaert, which was a surprise for many however their entire Tour de France campaign has been shadowed by their decision to leave Mark Cavendish off of the roster, making it impossible for Mark Cavendish to break the Tour de France stage win record. The teams comments are still flooded by fans disappointed in the teams decision to leave Cav and take Jacobsen.
Sagan’s still the boss. It’s always entertaining to watch a young gun come up against Sagan in a technical moment where Sagan is pretty much untouchable. You’ve got to be willing to hit the ground to take Sagan off the wheel, and everyone knows it. Caleb Ewan put it to the test last year, and they both hit the pavement hard, ruining both of their Tour de France aspirations. Wout van Aert even tried in the 2020 Tour, and got absolute bossed. Nobody touches Sagan, and today was no different. Sagan navigated the peloton, riding at the front in all the key areas.
Jakobsen is the strongest sprinter in the race. The guy straight up beat everyone else today on stage 1. The battle leading into the closing kilometers was 10/10 stressful and as Jakobsen opened, he was untouchable. You could really see the strength training/ weights that Jakobsen does all year paying off.
Conclusion: Wout’s in yellow, Quickstep’s winning, EF’s had some absolutely brutal luck, and the Tour de France is still the most exciting race of the year.
Stay tuned for more articles on this year’s tour!
