The Tour has started, and immediately the whole peloton was surprised. 'Glad this stage is over', said top favorite Pogacar

There were high fives at Dutch team Visma-Lease a Bike (LAB), curses at Belgian team Soudal Quick-Step, and defending champion Tadej Pogacar sighed that he was glad the day was over.

The first stage of the Tour de France was supposed to be a day for the sprinters, and with Belgian Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Deceuninck, a sprinter also emerged as the winner. But after the race on Saturday afternoon, the talk at the team buses on the Façade de l'Esplanade in Lille was about everything but the sprinters.

Against all expectations, the classification riders immediately turned it into a pitched battle with the help of the wind that blew across the Northern French countryside. The conclusion after almost four hours of cycling: for podium candidates Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) and Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) the chase can already begin after one day.

In advance, there were fears of major crashes. For the first time since 2020, a flat course was available for the first Tour stage, which sprinters and their teams could handle. With the reward of the yellow jersey in sight, the expectation was that there would be a lot of pushing and shoving in the peloton in the battle for the best positioning for the mass sprint towards the finish. In the past, this almost always led to mass crashes.

This time it was not so bad, although there was a painful clash between the Frenchmen Benjamin Thomas and Mattéo Vercher, who went all out in their battle for the first mountain jersey. In a last-ditch attempt to grab a point on the cobbled climb to Mont Cassel, Thomas pushed his bike diagonally over the line, lost control of his rear wheel and knocked not only himself, but also Vercher down. The latter could only raise his hands in astonishment. Thomas took the mountain jersey.

Then the game started with the wind, which blew from the northwest with a wind force of 4. Towards hamlets with names like Steenvoorde, Méteren and Nieppe the wind had all the space on wide, straight roads to tear the peloton to pieces. A few times it seemed like echelons were forming, but the riders didn't seem to want to lose sight of each other. So everyone prepared for a mass sprint.

Visma-LAB had not counted on that. The team with Danish leader Jonas Vingegaard, who is riding around France this year without Dutchmen, pushed again on the last straight stretch of asphalt, and suddenly there was a gap. Pogacar was alert and was in the front group of more than thirty men, just like Philipsen and his teammate Mathieu van der Poel. Behind them, the difference with the rest of the peloton quickly increased to half a minute. At the finish line, the damage for Evenepoel and Roglic was 39 seconds.

“That was the plan, to attack twenty kilometers from the finish,” said Visma-LAB’s Matteo Jorgenson with satisfaction as he rode out on the rollers near the team bus. “We got between the buildings today and had a crosswind, and we managed to sit together and accelerate together.”

The team had reconnoitered the final sixty kilometres of the stage on Friday and realised that if there was any chance of echelons forming in the finale, it would be at that point on the course. "Then it's better to take the initiative yourself than for someone else to do it," said team manager Grischa Niermann.

Captain Jonas Vingegaard – 1.75 metres tall, 58 kilos – did not hide behind his teammates and made a few turns in the wind. "The main goal was to stay out of trouble, and then it is really great if you can create problems for others yourself. We succeeded in that."

'Stupid seconds'

Even the teams that were in the lead were surprised by the Dutch team's action. "We didn't expect it anymore," said Kaden Groves, teammate of winner Jasper Philipsen. "But in the end it worked out in our favor." The split in the peloton meant that Philipsen was suddenly freed from his main competitors Tim Merlier and Jonathan Milan, who were not in the leading group. He then sprinted unchallenged to victory.

The losers of the day blamed themselves. "We were lulled to sleep. This was a collective mistake by the team and we lost stupid seconds," Evenepoel told the French press agency AFP. The Belgian escaped worse damage when he steered into the verge and narrowly avoided a fall. Roglic quickly disappeared into the team bus afterwards and was not seen again.

Defending champion Tadej Pogacar of UAE Team Emirates-XRG was lucky and called it a hectic day. "Just when we thought it wasn't going to happen anymore, we had to do it again," the Slovenian panted. "It's going to be an important week until the first rest day."

The riders will face at least four stages in the coming days with many steep climbs, ideal for punchers like Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert. But GC riders like Pogacar and Evenepoel can do it too, and with the battle for yellow already underway, it promises to be an unpredictable week. “The first battle has been won,” said Visma-LAB’s Jorgenson, “but the war is far from over.”