Geraint Thomas of Ineos Grenadiers threw caution to the wind in the Copenhagen rain as the 2022 Tour de France got under way with a treacherous opening individual time-trial stage in the Danish capital.
Thomas, who won on a similarly drenched course at the start of the 2018 Tour in Düsseldorf, “pulled the pin” on a nervy start to the stage, but it was not enough to lift him into the top 10, as the defending champion Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates) proved faster than all his rivals for final victory in Paris. Yves Lampaert of Belgium, riding for Quickstep-Alpha Vinyl, was seen as an unexpected stage winner despite his time-trialling pedigree, and took the first maillot jaune, as the controversy over the team’s omission of the sprinter Mark Cavendish finally subsided. “My mind is exploding,” a tearful Lampaert said after his win.
Thomas raced in a sleeveless gilet over his aerodynamic kit after forgetting to remove it after his warm-up. “That was the worst first half of a time trial that I have ever done,” the Welshman said. “Everyone’s telling you to take it easy, but the main thing when I won in Düsseldorf, is just flow. This felt so bitty, stop and start. When I heard the time gaps, 18 seconds down to Mathieu van der Poel, I thought: ‘Sod it, just race’ and then I went better.
“The legs were good anyway, but it’s a shame about that blinking gilet. Because I zipped it up all nice and snug, I forgot I had it on and nobody spotted it. I did think about taking it off but it would have been a bit dodgy.
“The main thing is the legs felt good, really good to be fair. When I put the power down I had plenty of it. Mentally it was one of the hardest time trials I’ve ever done.”
The stage was dominated by riders from the Jumbo-Visma with Wout van Aert, Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard all finishing in the top 10. Of the early starters, Van Aert set the fastest time but as the rain eased, later in the afternoon his time was surpassed by Lampaert.
Yet the die seems already cast with Pogacar finishing fastest of the major contenders for overall victory. The 23-year-old Slovenian, reserved in the earlier and more technical sections of the course, picked up pace towards the finish in a demonstration suggesting that he had maintained the flying form that recently secured victory in his native tour.
Both Thomas and his British teammate, Adam Yates, unsure of his form after a recent bout of Covid-19, will rightly point to the thousands of kilometres of racing still to come, but it is already clear that the Slovenian double Tour winner will, as expected, be the rider to beat.
Yates, sporting a super-sized helmet and visor last seen worn by Darth Vader, recorded a better time than had been predicted and may come into his best form as the race progresses.
The Tour’s superstars opted to pick their start times according to the predicted weather conditions, but the best-laid plans backfired when the heavens opened almost as the stage began. Staying upright and minimising risk on the Tour’s opening stage immediately became the priority, but even so the slick city streets caught out some.
With Pogacar watching on, his chief rivals, Slovenian compatriot Roglic and his Danish teammate, Vingegaard, fuelled the expected leadership battle within their Jumbo-Visma team by finishing only a second apart. Their duel for supremacy, alongside their battle to overthrow Pogacar, is likely to be one of the talking points of the Tour.
In what is expected to be a stressful and hectic weekend of racing, before Monday’s lengthy transfer to northern France, a second all-too-familiar story is shadowing the peloton after French prosecutors, coordinating with Europol, confirmed that their third raid in a year, and second in a week , on the Bahrain Victorious team, was in pursuit of prohibited substances.
“Law enforcement and judicial authorities in France, Belgium, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Poland and Slovenia have carried out a coordinated action against the use of prohibited substances in cycling races,” Europol said in a statement.
“The investigation was led by the French OCLAESP under the supervision of the French public prosecutor’s office in Marseille to look into possible doping allegations of a cycling team participating in the Tour de France.
“Three people were interrogated. The investigation is ongoing and the evidence seized is being forensically examined.
“The properties of several riders and their staff were searched in Belgium, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Poland and Slovenia.”
Meanwhile a statement from the French prosecutor’s offices in Marseilles, where the investigation is based, contradicted what the Bahrain Victorious team said after Thursday’s raid, when they stated that “no items were seized”.
According to the French authorities, “Electronic material (phones, computers, hard drives) and medicines – of which the nature and origin remain undetermined, or which require a prescription – have been seized.”
