Geraint Thomas of Ineos Grenadiers survived a clothing error in the Copenhagen rain to make a solid start to the 2022 Tour de France, as the race got under way with an opening individual time trial in the Danish capital.
Thomas, who won on a similarly drenched course at the start of the 2018 Tour in Dusseldorf, raced in a sleeveless gilet over his aerodynamic kit after forgetting to remove it following 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 Dusseldorf, is just flow, a nice smooth line. This felt so bitty, stop and start. When I heard the time gaps, 18 seconds down to Matthieu 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. That was bugging me as well.
“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 team with Wout van Aert, Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard all powering confidently through the city streets. Of the early starters, Van Aert set the fastest time but as the rain eased later in the afternoon, his time increasingly looked under threat.
Yves Lampaert was the surprise winner of a rain-drenched opening time trial in a time of 15 minutes 17 seconds to beat van Aert by five seconds. Defending Tour champion Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates) finished fastest of the major contenders for overall victory in third, despite a cautious ride through the treacherous urban bends.
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 revealing that he had maintained the flying form that had recently secured victory in his native tour.
Both Thomas and his British team mate, Adam Yates, unsure of his form after a recent bout of Covid-19, will rightly point to the thousands of kilometers of racing still to come, but it is already clear that the Slovenian double Tour winner will be, as expected, the rider to beat.
Yates, sporting a super-sized helmet and visor, last seen on Darth Vader, recorded a better time that had been predicted and may come into his best form as the race progresses. But he and Thomas lost ground to Pogacar, even though the reigning champion was unable to match Van Aert’s pace. The Belgian’s performance surprised some, given that he had complained of a knee injury hampering his form on the eve of the race.
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 minimizing risk on the Tour’s opening stage immediately became the priority but even so the slick city streets caught out some.
Riders were slipping and sliding through the bends on the fast and technical city course almost immediately, with pre-stage favorite Stefan Bissegger (EF Education-EasyPost) crashing twice in the Tour’s first race against the clock.
With Pogacar watching on, his chief rivals, Slovenian compatriot Roglic and his Danish teammate, Vingegaard, played up 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, prior to 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.
“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.”
The investigation was led by the French OCLAESP (a judicial police department focused on public health), under the supervision of the French public prosecutor’s office in Marseille, to look into possible doping allegations of a team participating in the Tour de France.
Meanwhile a statement from the French prosecutor’s offices in Marseille, where the investigation is based, contradicted what the Bahrain Victorious team said following Thursday’s raid, after which 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.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism