A stark change of scenery: week 2 Domestique Debrief
From the rugged coastline and rolling farmland of the north, the Tour de France made its way south and east to visit some more familiar territory in its central week. Here are our takeaways from five frenetic days of action.

Just 50% as long as ‘week 1’, in terms of the number of stages it contained, the notion of the ‘week’ as a defined, measurable increment of time has lost all meaning this year at the Tour. Though week 1 packed in 10 stages on its meandering path from Lille to Le Mont-Dore, week 2 has produced almost as many talking points, with the predictable pattern of the flat and punchy stage profiles giving way to the Tour’s high mountains.
From misty peaks to protests and from breakaway politics to unexpected victories, week 2 saw Remco Evenepoel depart the race, INEOS Grenadiers celebrate victory on the same day their team car collided with a spectator, and yet more wars of words between the leading teams.
Meanwhile, Julian Alaphilippe tore up a fan’s Wout van Aert sign to pack down his jersey on the Tourmalet, and crashed and dislocated his shoulder only to come back to beat Van Aert in a sprint for third and celebrate thinking he’d won the next. Just a standard Tour de France for everyone’s favourite French pirate, then. Here are a few broad impressions of the second week, as we advance headlong to the grand finale…
Expect the unexpected
Pundits and fans alike were ready to write off this Tour de France as a done deal before it had even started. While Pogačar has made good on everyone’s expectations of him thus far, there have been plenty of surprises too, and where week one often boiled down to a series of similar scenarios, all with slightly different outcomes, week two was a mixed bag.
Beginning with the mayhem of stage 11, a stage which encapsulated everything that is mad and brilliant and terrible and unpredictable about this sport of ours. From the high-octane all-out war to get into the breakaway, to Tadej Pogačar’s crash and the subsequent truce, to Abrahamsen and Schmid’s last-gasp two-up sprint as Mathieu van der Poel bore down on them and with a protester running out in front of them, stage 11 had it all – drama, intrigue and a truly perfect narrative behind the winner’s journey to victory.
After that there was the giant breakaway of stage 12, which was ultimately demolished by the utter brilliance of Pogačar, to the race of truth on the Peyragudes, followed by the descending of the mist over stage 14, and a beautiful solo ride in polka dots from Lenny Martinez, as he reclaimed his jersey on the Col du Tourmalet, before finally, a breakaway rider in the shape of Thymen Arensman was able to resist the all-consuming rivalry that has eclipsed most other storylines on the high mountains in Tours gone by.
With the race travelling at incredibly high speeds, each day has had the feel of a one-day Classic – that sense of riders picking their one shot and laying it all on the line, knowing that there’s little to no chance of them having it within them to go again tomorrow. Well, all except for Quinn Simmons.
The Tour’s brutality comes home to roost
Grand Tours are not for the faint-hearted. As the peloton moved deeper into the race, the impact of multiple days of high exertion combined with soaring temperatures, and viruses began to do the rounds, as the second week kicked off with no less intensity than the first had been fought at. The sustained efforts really began to take the toll and we saw six more riders depart the race in the past five days, to add to the 12 across the first ten days. Injuries from earlier crashes compounded and the intensity of the heat and the efforts were too much to bear for some riders.
The most notable departure was of course Remco Evenepoel. The Belgian had two very bad days on the bike, in a Pyrenean block to forget, as he stepped off on the Tourmalet, dropped immediately after the climbing began, and later admitting that he was not himself, though there was no one cause he could pinpoint to explain his inability to access his best form.
Writing off the first or even second of Remco’s bad days as just that was perhaps somewhat short-sighted; the far-reaching impact of his early-season training crash has clearly been under-estimated, with a subsequent lack of race days potentially the root cause of Remco’s lack of condition, though it’s entirely possible there could be more going on, as he and his team try to get to the bottom of the issue.
It’s arguable that as an audience, both fans and media have come to expect riders to make miraculous recoveries from life-threatening injuries, to the point where it’s seen as commonplace. Jonas Vingegaard’s 2024 Tour de France preparations were marred by such a crash, and though he lost by a significant time gap to a fully fit Tadej Pogačar, he still put up a fight, and even won a stage. Such feats are down to the outstanding care received by these athletes, combined with their own innate physical resilience – recovery is in-built, it seems. Yet Remco’s departure is a stark reminder, that everything is not always so straightforward, when it comes to the human body.
The teams desperate for success in week 3
Cycling is already a sport of the haves and the have-nots – much like many other sports, where finances dictate resources. UAE Team Emirates and Visma | Lease a Bike are contesting a different race to the other teams, dictating the pace of stages, chasing down breakaways (sometimes), and coming first and second even on days supposedly designated as ‘breakaway’ days. UAE have five stages and though Visma have only one, they have been instrumental in creating the dynamic that has made it nigh-on impossible for the smaller teams to carve out anything of worth for themselves at this race.
A number of other teams have stage wins of course – the best of the rest, Soudal-QuickStep, lead with three through Tim Merlier and Evenepoel, while Alpecin-Deceuninck have two (Philipsen and van der Poel). Lidl-Trek, EF Education-EasyPost, INEOS Grenadiers and Uno-X have one apiece.
Of the 15 teams who haven’t won a stage, several have been active in other areas – Lenny Martinez’ KOM hunt is single-handedly saving Bahrain-Victorious’ Tour, while Arkéa-B&B Hotels have enjoyed the spotlight courtesy of Kévin Vauquelin’s run of days in white and general exuberant racing spirit. With strong GC interests still alive, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe and Team Picnic-PostNL can also be pretty happy with how their races have unfolded thus far.
That leaves 11 teams. Movistar are the most glaring absence so far on the score sheet. The Spanish team have had Einer Rubio and Ivan Romeo active in breakaways, but with Enric Mas underperforming on GC, the Spanish team will be very disappointed with their race so far.
Tudor Pro Cycling, Team Jayco-AlUla, Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale and to a lesser extent TotalEnergies have been pretty active in breakaways, but would all dearly love to make something stick in the final week. As for Cofidis and Intermarché-Wanty – arguably the two most doomed teams at the race in terms of crashes, injuries and bad luck – they have been visible, but mostly for the wrong reasons. Two teams whose very existence is under threat, they will be throwing everything on the line to try and find a result as the race days tick away.
Which brings me to the invisible teams. XDS-Astana, Groupama-FDJ, Israel-Premier Tech and Lotto have all tried to get away at various points but have been outgunned. There are always teams who just don’t have the right combination of riders to find their way to victory at a Grand Tour, and these four seem to be the teams cursed with the invisibility stick at this year's race. There is hope for them yet, with six stages still to ride, but with opportunities few and far between courtesy of the giants of the sport, it’s going to require a herculean effort to make anything stick.
One to rule them all
Of course, the headline act of this second week, was the man who continues to break down expectations, only to rebuild them higher, faster, stronger and better. Tadej Pogačar returned from rest day not even in the yellow jersey, after Ben Healy’s fearless raid on stage 10, but he still enjoyed a 1:17 cushion over his main rival Vingegaard.
Five stages on, and that 1:17 has swelled to 4:13, mostly due to the strength of his ride on the Hautacam on stage 12, and the superior mountain time trial he posted on stage 13. He sits a mind-boggling 18:41 ahead of the 10th place on GC – ironically, Healy himself – a statistic which in and of itself is remarkable for the magnitude of the margin, but also illustrates just how far removed he is from everyone else in the sport.
With four stage wins, and sitting second in both the points and KOM classifications, Tadej Pogačar could take the biggest haul of prizes away from this Tour that’s been seen in decades. He could feasibly win another three stages, bag three jerseys outright, and potentially lead by 8, 10, or even 12 minutes over second place by the time he arrives in Paris. The fact that all this is a possibility speaks to his generational talent. Of course, this is the Tour, and anything can happen – but it’s Tadej Pogačar, and it probably won’t.