It was a beautiful afternoon in Burgundy. Warm sunshine, tens of thousands of people on the roadside, picnics with the best cheese and wine and a 25.3km time-trial course that offered the strongest riders in the Tour de France a perfect opportunity to show what they had. If you listened to the big boys afterwards, they all had good days and performed to the level they expected of themselves. Broadly speaking, they weren’t being dishonest, just leaving the nuance to us.
The four contenders for the final Yellow Jersey were the four fastest crossing the line in Gevrey-Chambertin. Remco Evenepoel, the 24-year-old Belgian riding his first Tour, completing the course in 28min 52sec. That pleased Evenepoel because from the beginning of the Tour, his sights have been set to modest.
“If I could win a stage and get to the finish in Nice, that would be nice,” he said in the days before the Tour began.
He has his win now and finds himself nicely positioned in second place on general classification, just 33 seconds behind race leader Tadej Pogacar. “Crazy,” he said. “I was on a good day but the climb was actually pretty tough because of course I wanted to start fast and I had to keep something for the climb which wasn’t easy. Then the descent, when you’re on the limit was pretty technical and fast. But I enjoyed every metre of this TT and coming out with the win is simply amazing. Super happy,”
Shouldn’t his rivals be frightened of Evenepoel? Well, no. Pogacar talked beforehand about Evenepoel being the world champion time-triallist and the obvious favourite to win the stage. Frame the test in this way and then second place, just 12 seconds slower than the best time-triallist in the world could almost seem like a victory. While not quite matching Evenepoel’s exceptional power, Pogacar rode really well.
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“I had good legs,” he said. “I went too hard on the climb, on the rolling part on the top I suffered the most, but it was a nice parcours and I really enjoyed it. To lose against the world champion, the best time-triallist in the world, it’s a good feeling and I can be satisfied. I gained time on Primoz [Roglic] and Jonas [Vingegaard] and the other guys so I can be really happy with that. I need to keep an eye on Remco now because he’s a little closer.”
You imagine if Evenpoel beat Pogacar and Pogacar beat Roglic and Vingegaard by 22sec and 25sec respectively, then the latter two must have been a little deflated. Not a bit. “With the performance I put out, I can be optimistic,” Roglic said. “I am happy and looking forward [to what is to come].” Brilliant in the race against the clock in last year’s Tour, Vingegaard’s performance was the least of the four favourites, which was a slight surprise.
But he, too, wasn’t at all discouraged. “I am quite satisfied with the time-trial I rode today,” the Team Visma-Lease a Bike said on the team’s official website. “The feeling was already good. There are still many stages to come where a lot can happen. I’m really looking forward to that.”
His director sportif Grischa Niermann sang from the same hymn sheet. ”We knew the course would not be ideal for Jonas. He was not able to use his strengths optimally. In hindsight, a place in the top ten is a fine result. He’s still in a good position in view of what lies ahead in the next few days.”
The deeper truths are worth exploring because a flattish 25km time-trial is as close to an x-ray machine as you could have in cycling. Riders go through it and get a pretty precise reading on their form. Evenepoel is in the best shape imaginable and at this point in the Tour, he’s moved ahead of Vingegaard and Roglic and now seems the most likely rider to challenge Pogacar, if indeed there is going to be a serious challenger.
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Roglic, 34, did a decent ride for a man who is moving almost imperceptibly into the twilight of his career, just as he did a decent ride on the Col du Galibier on the fourth stage. But the important point from that Galibier ride was that when the UAE team upped the pace and Pogacar then attacked, Roglic couldn’t stay them. The 35sec loss at the summit of the Galibier will be counted in the minutes during the Alpine stages in the final week.
There is a view, too, that Vingegaard’s form will improve as the Tour progresses, that having endured a truncated preparation because of the injuries sustained in his crash at the Itzulia Basque Country race in April, he needs time to find his best form. It may be that this is how it works out but mostly in the Tour de France, the strong stay strong and the weak grow weaker. Vingegaard has not really been himself — and how could he be? — but it is presumptuous to believe that it’s all going to get better over the next two weeks.
Which is to say that only Evenepoel and Pogacar are being realistic when talking about how encouraged they were by their time-trial performances. Other GC riders found the going distinctively tough. Ineos Grenadiers’ GC contender Carlos Rodriguez lost 1min 27sec, which was too much for a rider hoping to get on the podium.
Another Ineos rider, Tom Pidcock, after an encouraging time-trial at last month’s Tour de Suisse, rode serenely through the Burgundy countryside, finishing a lowly 120th, which probably means that Pidcock is eyeing a stage win this weekend. Don’t be surprised if he gets it.
