Vingegaard and Pogacar start as they mean to go on at Tour de France

The Tour de France is a marathon and not a sprint, so maybe it was only fitting that the opening team time trial finished on the climb of Montjuïc. Back in 1992, this very hill was the site of a memorable duel on the final night of the Barcelona Olympics, when Hwang Young-Cho pressed clear of Koichi Morishita on its slopes to claim a most arduous edition of the men’s marathon.

On Saturday, it offered the denouement of a much shorter and faster contest. Jonas Vingegaard and Visma | Lease a Bike proved the quickest across the 19km course, 12 seconds clear of Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG in third, but it’s not entirely clear how much can be extrapolated about the final result from the first steps of this particular marathon effort. 

The early indications, mind, are that this race again offer up a familiar duel for the yellow jersey. While Vingegaard is back in the precious garment for the first time since he last claimed overall victory in 2023, his eternal rival Pogačar was still three seconds quicker than him on the final haul up Montjuïc. 

Outside of time bonuses, this is the first occasion that Vingegaard has gained ground on Pogačar in the general classification of the Tour since the indelible ‘I’m gone, I’m dead’ stage over the Col de la Loze back in 2023. 

And yet Pogačar will still come away from this Tour’s opening salvo feeling that his air of invulnerability is resolutely intact. As if to underscore the point, he was ushered to the podium to collect the first polka dot jersey of the Tour for being the quickest up Montjuïc.

This team time trial, run off according to ASO’s new twist on the old rules, made for a hybrid contest, with collective depth key in the opening 16km before individual power came into focus on the two climbs in the closing 3km.

Vingegaard’s effort on Montjuïc indicated that he has recovered well from his Giro d’Italia victory and probably even improved ahead of his July rendezvous. Pogačar’s acceleration on the same climb left a strong Isaac del Toro seeming at a standstill, confirming that he remains the man to beat at this and every other race on the calendar. 

In the end, the difference between Vingegaard and Pogačar here owed much to the strength and strategies of their respective teams on the course. Visma elected to have Vingegaard and climbers Davide Piganzoli and Sepp Kuss sit on the back through the flat opening section through the boulevards of Barcelona, and they only began taking turns in the hilly final 3km.

UAE, by contrast, opted not to spare Pogačar and Del Toro to the same degree, but the wider team still looked a little less smooth. They lost Adam Yates and Nils Politt surprisingly early in their effort, and they lost time steadily to Visma through the three intermediate time checks. They were four seconds down on Visma at the first check after 5km, and that had yawned out to 13 seconds by the time they hit the third check ahead of that rugged finale.

In that final reckoning, there was little to choose between Pogačar and Vingegaard, but despite conceding a dozen seconds on GC, the Slovenian will be more than consoled by the fact that he was still quicker than his old sparring partner in the individual portion of their efforts.

The Tour is still long, but that probably won’t stop Pogačar from looking to strike back early and often. He and Vingegaard will go at it again when the race returns to Montjuïc for the rugged finale to stage 2. 

But this Tour isn’t a duopoly just yet, of course, and it would be unwise to make snap judgements on individuals based on their showings in this collective environment. The stage did, however, offer some interesting pointers regarding the hierarchy at teams with more than one GC option.

Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz are the co-leaders at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, but the Belgian stole an early march on his stablemate with a searing display here. Lipowitz was already flagging on the penultimate climb, and Evenepoel cruised clear of him on the final haul up Montjuïc.

Evenepoel had to settle for fifth on the stage, losing 19 seconds to Vingegaard, but he had the tacit consolation of underlining his credentials within Red Bull by putting 16 seconds into Lipowitz.

His confidence will also be buoyed by the fact that his effort on the climbs was roughly in line with those of Pogačar and Vingegaard. Evenepoel was the third quickest across the final 3.7km, just two seconds off Pogačar and on the same time as Vingegaard, and all that after he had been Red Bull’s main locomotive across the preceding 15km.

Asked about the gap to Lipowitz, meanwhile, Evenepoel was pointedly succinct: “A pace was set for me, and I maintained it. I did my thing in the finale.”

Over at Lidl-Trek, the leadership structure was already more defined beforehand, but Mattias Skjelmose’s puncture means he conceded 1:33 on the stage. His team leader Juan Ayuso, meanwhile, had an encouraging start to his Tour, leading Lidl-Trek to fourth on the stage, 16 seconds behind Vingegaard.

There was never any leadership debate at UAE, and Isaac del Toro was a dutiful teammate here. But the Dauphiné winner remains firmly in the podium hunt, lying sixth overall at 26 seconds after Pogačar burnt him off his wheel in the last 500m.

It was a more difficult afternoon for debutant Paul Seixas, who was hampered by quite a subdued showing from a Decathlon CMA CGM squad that wasn’t exactly built for this discipline.

They were already 29 seconds off Visma’s base before the climbing began, and Seixas was left to do the vast bulk of the work on the two short ascents. He lost another 10 seconds in the finale to leave him 39 seconds after a day that was ultimately about damage limitation rather than a breakout performance. 

But no harm in that. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.