'The perfect start' - Vingegaard steals early march on Pogacar in Tour opener

There’s a whole lot of Tour de France still to come, of course, but the race could hardly have started any better for Jonas Vingegaard, who led his Visma | Lease a Bike squad to victory in the stage 1 team time trial in Barcelona.

The stage was run off under the ‘new’ team time trial rules, where the times are taken individually. It made for a stage of two parts, with teams essentially providing a high-speed lead-out for their leaders into the two climbs up the side of Montjuïc.

Visma played their deck perfectly, holding Vingegaard and his climbing domestiques Davide Piganzoli and Sepp Kuss back for that punchy finale. And on the final kick to the line, Vingegaard showed that his sharpness hadn’t been blunted by his Giro d’Italia exertions, coming home eight seconds quicker than Filippo Ganna (Netcompany-Ineos) and 12 ahead of his eternal rival Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

“I would say it’s the perfect start,” Vingegaard said. “It’s still a long Tour, obviously, but it’s the perfect start. My teammates, they did an amazing job today. They were so strong. I didn’t have to do much, to be honest. They just drove me all the way to the finish. And to take the stage win for us and to take the yellow jersey, also for me personally, after a few years without it, a few hard years, it’s nice for me to experience it again.”

Vingegaard and Visma’s strategy proved a winning one here, and it contrast with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, where time trial world champion Remco Evenepoel took lengthy turns throughout their effort before punching clear of his teammates on the climb to Montjuïc. He finished the day 19 seconds down on Vingegaard.

“Everything went as planned. We had this tactic and, yeah, it paid off in the end,” Vingegaard said.

“It’s an amazing victory for us, especially when it’s a team time trial where I have seven teammates who sacrificed themselves for me today. I’m the one wearing the yellow jersey after today, but they also won the stage and we have to really enjoy this, and I want to I thank my teammates and my team for this.”

Vingegaard is aiming to become the ninth man in history to win the Giro-Tour double. He has a long way to go, but he’s made a fast start. The last rider to win the maglia rosa and then wear yellow on the first evening of the Tour was Miguel Induráin at Le Puy de Fou in 1993, and the Spaniard would go on to complete his second successive Grand Tour double that July.

“Of course, I’m here to do the best possible GC and to try to win, but it’s only stage 1, there’s a long way left, a long way still in the Tour de France,” Vingegaard said. “We have a small gap now, but of course, this is the perfect start for us. I couldn’t dream of a better start to be honest.”

Vingegaard has never finished lower than second in his five Tours de France, winning the race in 2022 and 2023. His preparation for the 2024 race was interrupted by a career-threatening crash at that year’s Itzulia Basque Country, and he admitted during the Giro that he had only discovered his sensations of old this season.  

“As I’ve said before, I’ve had a few tough years for obvious reasons, but coming back to the Tour is special,” he said. “Just to be a wearer of the yellow jersey is something special, something that I will enjoy.”