Minutes after Dylan Groenewegen sprinted to victory in the Tour de France on Thursday, Jayco-AIUIa's management were already cracking jokes about his outlandish aero 'beak', with sports manager Matt White smiling when asked about the unusual aero' eyewear: "Batman did win today!"
The Australian squad staff were logically in the highest of spirits at such an early win in the Tour de France, their first in a Grand Tour since Filippo Zana went solo in the mountains of the Giro d'Italia last year, and their first in the Tour since Michael Matthews won on Mende airfield in 2022.
Their win also helped make up for the setback of GC contender Simon Yates' relatively tough start to the Tour, getting dropped on the Col du Galibier on stage 4 and losing over four minutes.
Groenewegen had five Tour stage victories to his name before starting this year's race but missed out last year with a series of top-five placings. This season, he's changed up his run-in to the race, switching up his training, missing the Critérium du Dauphiné, and coming to the Tour with a slightly reduced schedule.
That, along with those now-infamous Scicon Aeroscope sunglasses, appears to have served him well already.
"Stuff is allowed if it's on the market," Groenewegen said of his shades, which he was forced to remove on stage 3. "Scicon now put it on the market so it's allowed, and we can stop that discussion now. I don't know how many watts it is but if they say it's a bit faster then I will use it. Today it was just enough [to win] so maybe it was just my glasses.
"I feel, not exactly better this year, but I felt faster in the spring. A lot of times the sprint is going better than it was. In 2022 I won a stage and then we did almost the same [schedule] last year and I didn't win a stage and it was really bad.
"I was always there in the sprints but there wasn't a victory. This year, after the Classics, we changed it a little bit and it looks like we made a good balance to sprint harder."
Delivering Jayco-AlUla's first Tour stage win after the 2023 drought will "take a bit of pressure off" for the next two weeks, Groenewegen said, while his directeur sportif Matt White revealed that the team would trade in any of the team's other 18 wins this season for a big one at the Tour.
"Every team needs it [a Tour stage win], these three weeks are a massive chunk of publicity," White said. "We'd trade in every other of the 18 for this one.
"[2023] was a great Tour, but you're judged by your wins and a lot of the year is judged on these three weeks. So, to get one in the can so early is great because obviously there are more sprint opportunities to come and other opportunities for our other riders, too."
Explaining the relatively late appearance of the Jayco-AIUIa team in the pointy end of affairs at the Tour's third bunch sprint in four days, White said "The boys stayed patient, they came and went, and it was a very messy sprint, but the main thing is he got there fresh, he got there in the open because he's got a lot of speed."
Groenewegen explained that his teammates had done their job on stage 5 to Saint-Vulbas, but said that he was lacking a good feeling and, subsequently, the confidence to fight for the win, perhaps because the team had spent the previous night at altitude following the Tour's early mountain stage to Valloire.
"I was a little boxed in, but that's also sprinting," he said of stage 5. "Then I launched my sprint and the gap closed. That's part of sprinting but yesterday I was really disappointed because I didn't feel really well, maybe because I slept at altitude. Then you also lose a bit of confidence in the final and make wrong choices.
"The team did really well yesterday but I didn't follow the guys. That was my fault and I also told them after the finish that speed is still there, so we need to keep the confidence.
"Today we did a really good job with the team. Everyone was pushing, and in the end, we got the victory."
Groenewegen and his lead-out men could well be back in action on Saturday as the Tour heads for yet another sprint stage on the 183.4km run from Semur-en-Auxois to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.
Groenewegen may be in line for stage win number two there, though with three different sprint winners in three sprint stages so far during this Tour, there could well be another man celebrating at the finish line. He explained that the level of both sprinters and lead-out trains is higher than ever at this year's race.
"I think the level of sprinters is really high," he said. "Every sprinter has a really strong sprint train, so it's not just 2-3 teams who have a really strong sprinter and strong sprint team.
"It's all on the same level and you can do the things right to win a stage and you also need the confidence to win. Today it was us, yesterday it was Mark Cavendish, and the other day Biniam Girmay, so that's the nice thing about sprinting right now."
Groenewegen's winning margin – just about the width of a mid-section wheel – might well have been aided by his funky new sunglasses, and no doubt he'll be donning them once again on stage 8.
But for now, he and his team can celebrate their first win of the Tour – "Batman did win today," joked White.
Get unlimited access to all of our coverage of the Tour de France - including breaking news and analysis reported by our journalists on the ground from every stage of the race as it happens and more. Find out more.
