Tour de France. Vingegaard takes the yellow jersey straight away. Ganna puts in an excellent performance to finish second, 8 seconds behind
The Dane is turning up the pressure and sending a message to rivals such as Pogacar
What a wonderful start to this Tour de France! It was set to be a head-to-head battle right from the start, and that’s exactly what it was. But there was a surprise: Jonas Vingegaard was the first to don the yellow jersey.
The Danish champion, in the team time trial in Barcelona – where individual times counted towards the general classification – claimed victory, finishing 8 seconds ahead of Italy’s Filippo Ganna and 12 seconds ahead of his long-standing rival, Tadej Pogacar, who this time had to settle for third place. Meanwhile, the Belgian Remco Evenepoel, a time trial specialist, finished fifth, 19 seconds behind.
For Vingegaard, the winner of the last Giro d’Italia, it was a splendid debut in a race that was very different from the usual format: over these 19.65 kilometres, finishing on the slopes of Montjuïc, it was the time recorded by the first rider to cross the line that decided the stage victory.
And so, Vingegaard’s team, Visma, finished ahead of the rest, ahead of Ganna’s Ineos and Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Emirates – the pre-race favourite for the Grande Boucle and already a four-time winner of the race.
This victory by the Dane is no small feat. Of course, this is merely a tasty appetiser for the Tour, with another twenty stages to go, but in a race where psychological pressure also counts for a great deal, striking first is significant in its own right. It sounds like a warning: dear Tadej, you may be out of this world, and here in France you’re aiming for your fifth victory to join the ranks of Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Indurain, but I’ll do everything in my power to scupper your plans.
