Pulling on the yellow jersey for the first time in his glittering career made for a fairytale ending to day one of Romain Bardet’s last dance at his home Grand Tour.
Although it was the sun-drenched roads of Italy’s Emilia Romagna region that provided the backdrop for Bardet to add yet another chapter to the story of his long association with the Tour de France.
Earlier this week, before travelling to Florence for the Grand Départ, Bardet’s dsm–firmenich PostNL squad announced that the Frenchman would head up their Tour roster one last time. Stage wins were the goal, but not a single rider on the eight-man team would have expected one to materialise so quickly. At least that’s what Bardet’s teammate, Oscar Onley, told reporters gathered at the stage one finish in a scorching hot Rimini on the Adriatic coast.
Speaking in his post-race press conference after pulling on the yellow jersey, Bardet highlighted the contribution of another one of his teammates, 23-year-old Frank van den Broek, who made the day’s early breakaway before then acting as an impromptu satellite rider for Bardet to aim for once he had taken flight from the peloton on the Côte de San Leo.
The selfless Frenchman said afterwards that the win belonged to Van den Broek as much as it did to him after the Dutchman turned himself inside out to bring his leader to the finish line.
"It was the only way we could do it today," Bardet said. "I say 'we' because he won as much as me today. It's just the way we wanted to race here. It's the first day of his first-ever Tour de France and he was one of the three guys with Warren [Barguil] and me to have permission to be in the break today and to see if we could score some points and maybe go all the way.
"It's crazy to be the strongest from the initial break and it was the confirmation that we could go all the way to the finish. I think I wouldn't have done it without him so it was a collective victory."
Pure cycling
After his gruelling ride across the steep climbs of the Apennine mountains, Bardet at times seemed unable to believe it himself that he’d pulled off his first stage win at the Tour since 2017 when racing in the colours of the AG2R La Mondiale team.
When asked by Cycling Weekly to describe how it felt to pull on yellow, the Frenchman seemed at first lost for words.
He then said: "It's hard to say as I feel like I'm in a washing machine. It was just pure cycling. We are just two mates on the bike riding as fast as we can and going through pain. We knew it would be hard in the last 15km, but we got more confident as we went further and further.
"It was honestly when we realised that the finish line was in sight in the last 200m… It was pure joy."
Oscar Onley told a group of journalists at the finish that the team’s dominant performance wasn’t planned, it was pure spontaneity after Bardet made it clear that he had the legs for something special.
"It's just racing on instinct," Onley said. "That was definitely not planned today. He [Bardet] just said on the radio he felt good and asked if he should go. Matt Winston [team’s lead sports director] in the team car just said, 'Yeah, give it a go, we have Frank up the road to help.' It's just incredible."
"It's Romain's last Tour and he wanted to put on a show," Onley added. "I think he did that and by the sounds of things, Frank was unbelievably strong. We all know how much of an engine he has. I'm sure today in those last 15km he really showed the worth he has in this team."
Describing the moment that his and Bardet’s gap to the peloton began to tumble, Van den Broek said there was no other option but to ride hard and hope for the best.
He said: "It was just head down and pushing the last energy out of my legs. Maybe in a few hours, I'll realise what we’ve done. But that was just unbelievable."
"First and second on the first Tour stage, taking the jersey, I don't think you can ask for so much more," DS Matt Winston later added at the finish. "It means a lot and we will certainly enjoy it.
"But it's day one of the Tour, we've still got 20 stages to go and we don't change our focus. We'll defend the jersey for as long as we can, but even if we lose it tomorrow, we're still doing an amazing job."
The Tour de France continues on Sunday with the riders set to tackle 199km between Cesenatico and Bologna.
