‘We fell asleep’ - Remco Evenepoel frustrated after Tour de France time loss

There was frustration for Remco Evenepoel on stage 1 of the Tour de France after the Belgian conceded 39 seconds to favourites Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard when the peloton split into echelons on the windswept run-in to Lille.

Third a year ago, Evenepoel entered this Tour hoping to close the gap between himself and the men who have dominated the race in the 2020s. His relative travails in the mountains of the Critérium du Dauphiné illustrated the scale of that task, and he will rue conceding so much time so carelessly on the flat on the opening day of the Tour.

“We fell asleep,” Evenepoel said after the finish. “All day, we had been well placed and grouped at the front. I had the impression that the peloton was calm and that it was all going to come together for a bunch sprint. When it broke up, we were in the second group. It’s a big collective mistake on our part, but we have to look ahead now.”

The split was created by Visma | Lease a Bike, with Vingegaard himself to the fore in forcing the issue. Indeed, the Dane had already signalled his intentions by nabbing the king of the mountains point on offer on the day’s final climb of Mont Noir.

Pogačar was paying attention to the danger, but plenty more were caught out, including his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate João Almeida and his compatriot Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who both came in 39 seconds down with Evenepoel.

In that light, Evenepoel’s podium hopes haven’t taken an undue dent, but that will be of little consolation for a man who wishes to measure himself against Pogačar and Vingegaard. It also significantly reduces his prospects of taking the yellow jersey after the stage 5 time trial in Caen, where he is the outstanding favourite for victory.

“Those seconds are pretty annoying,” Evenepoel said. “It's a pain to start a Grand Tour behind, because it forces you to chase. Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard were ahead, but not many other riders in the general classification, so that's maybe the positive point of this negative day. We have to accept it and move on. We'll have to try to seize our chance with Tim Merlier. Today is more disappointing for him than for me.”

Evenepoel also sought to put the setback in the context of last year’s Tour, where he conceded a similar tranche of time to Pogačar on stage 4, though that loss came over the Col du Galibier rather than on the kind of flatland day that should be Soudal-QuickStep’s bread and butter.

“Last year I was already forty seconds behind after stage 4, and now it’s that way after stage 1,” he said. “But in the end, we have to live with it, and we are already focusing on tomorrow.”

Soudal-QuickStep CEO Jurgen Foré’s frustration was evident when he spoke to Sporza after the stage. “I'm not going to make any big analyses now, but we weren’t where we should have been,” Foré said. “We came here with a sprint team to avoid this. We have guys who can do this, so we were too far back, all of us. We lost a chance with Tim and time with Remco.”

Evenepoel lies 69th overall after stage 1, 49 seconds down on yellow jersey Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and 39 seconds down on Pogačar and Vingegaard.