{"id":2027448,"date":"2026-07-04T20:08:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T17:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2027448"},"modified":"2026-07-04T20:08:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T17:08:22","slug":"maybe-this-tour-de-france-wont-be-a-pogacar-cakewalk-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2027448","title":{"rendered":"Maybe This Tour de France Won’t Be a Poga\u010dar Cakewalk After All"},"content":{"rendered":"
Jonas Vingegaard in the yellow jersey and Tadej Poga\u010dar left chasing \u2014 no one expected to see that in the opening stage of the 2026 Tour de France.<\/p>\n
The Tour\u2019s experimental team time trial did exactly what organizers hoped for Saturday in steamy Barcelona.<\/p>\n
It put Vingegaard back in yellow for the first time since 2023, and reminded everyone that Poga\u010dar just might not be on cruise control all the way to Paris.<\/p>\n
The biggest takeaway Saturday isn\u2019t the 12 seconds Vingegaard snatched away from Poga\u010dar, but rather a subtle but important narrative shift right out of the gates.<\/p>\n
Visma-Lease a Bike struck first and ever so slightly put UAE Emirates-XRG on the back foot.<\/p>\n
Will this prove decisive when the Tour ends in Paris? Almost certainly not.<\/p>\n
But the Tour suddenly feels a little bit more open than it did 24 hours ago.<\/p>\n
Here are the biggest winners and losers after Saturday\u2019s wild opener:<\/p>\n
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Visma lands the first punch<\/h2>\nVisma-Lease a Bike won the opening time trial, with Jonas Vingegaard taking the lead (Photo: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Visma came with a squad built for the Tour\u2019s new team time trial format and delivered Vingegaard a yellow-and-black launchpad to the foot of Montju\u00efc.<\/p>\n
Then he finished off the job.<\/p>\n
Even more important than the 12 seconds and the yellow jersey is something that Vingegaard hasn\u2019t had since his horrific crash at the 2024 Itzulia Basque Country \u2014 self-belief.<\/p>\n
After watching Poga\u010dar bulldoze almost everything for the past two seasons, that psychological boost matters.<\/p>\n
Vingegaard also confirmed he\u2019s arriving fresh enough after the Giro d\u2019Italia to go 21 rounds with Poga\u010dar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a few bad years for me. I\u2019ve been at times struggling in the past few years, laying there in the ground believing that I am going to die,\u201d Vingegaard said of the 2024 crash.<\/p>\n
From there back to yellow could help lift Vingegaard across the next three weeks.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar finally has to respond<\/h2>\nTadej Pogacar came up short in the team time trial (Photo: Alberto Gardin\/Eurasia Sport Images\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
OK, let\u2019s not get carried away.<\/p>\n
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Poga\u010dar didn\u2019t have a bad day. He actually climbed Montju\u00efc faster than everyone else <\/em>and earned King of the Mountain jersey honors.<\/p>\n
The problem was that UAE couldn\u2019t match Visma on the flats before the climb.<\/p>\n
Unlike Netcompany-Ineos or Visma, UAE wasn\u2019t built to dominate a 20-minute team time trial. It was bleeding seconds on the flats.<\/p>\n
When Poga\u010dar turned on the afterburners, Montju\u00efc simply wasn\u2019t long enough.<\/p>\n
Even Peak Poga\u010dar could only claw back three seconds over the final kilometer.<\/p>\n
The four-time Tour winner won\u2019t be losing any sleep over it, but for the first time all season, Poga\u010dar was closing a gap rather than ripping one open.<\/p>\n
Maybe this Tour won\u2019t be another procession after all.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood news. I have climbing legs,\u201d Poga\u010dar said. \u201cAll the team did super good today, everybody went over the limit. Also thanks to the team I have this result today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The GC already has shape<\/h2>\n
Nobody loses the Tour on stage 1 (unless you crash out), but riders can definitely lose options<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Netcompany-Ineos hit second and nearly won its first yellow jersey since Egan Bernal won the Tour in 2019, but K\u00e9vin Vauquelin had the bad luck to puncture right near the base of Montjuic to lose 1:14.<\/p>\n
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Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) quietly delivered one of the top rides of the day, finishing best of the rest at 16 seconds slower to remind everyone he might deserve a spot behind cycling\u2019s Big Two.<\/p>\n
Remco Evenepoel missed out on his stated goal of winning the stage and taking yellow, \u00a0stopping the clock at 19 seconds slower, after Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe struggled across the flatter opening kilometers.<\/p>\n
The bigger concern for Red Bull may be Florian Lipowitz.<\/p>\n
The German whittled in the Barcelona heat and immediately ceded 16 seconds to Evenepoel and 39 seconds to Vingegaard.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only one stage, but if Red Bull is going to let those two race is out for the next three weeks, Saturday nudged the balance in favor of Evenepoel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew I had to carry the weight in the final stretch to ride as fast as possible on the climbs. I did my thing in the finale,\u201d Evenepoel said. \u201cWe started fast, everyone does what they can. I don\u2019t think it could have been much faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
Del Toro wins Round 1 over Seixas<\/h2>\nIsaac Del Toro rode strongly in the team time trial, getting his white jersey campaign underway (Photo: Loic Venance \/ AFP)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Isaac del Toro won the first round in the Tour\u2019s rookie rivalry with Paul Seixas.<\/p>\n
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No, they\u2019re not racing each other, but everyone will compare them anyway.<\/p>\n
The Mexican finished sixth, 26 seconds behind Vingegaard, while Seixas lost 39 seconds in his long-awaited Tour debut.<\/p>\n
Some of that came down to team strength, with Decathlon-CMA CGM struggling on the flats.<\/p>\n
Seixas had a huge mass of family and friends cheering him on in Barcelona. The Seixas mania will only grow.<\/p>\n
Tour\u2019s TTT format a big winner<\/h2>\n
The biggest winner Saturday may have been how well the TTT format played out.<\/p>\n
Some old-school Tour fans questioned the decision to time every rider individually instead of taking the fifth rider across the line.<\/p>\n
Instead, it delivered just what organizers were hoping for.<\/p>\n
All the top stars were sprinting up Montjuic at full-gas in front of a packed house, and rather than see huge gaps after the TTT, the GC is still tightly bundled.<\/p>\n
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There are just enough gaps between the big names to make things interesting, but not so much that the GC feels cooked on Day 1.<\/p>\n
And after only 19.6 kilometers, the Tour already has some super-sized drama.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Z8A_1775.jpg”] Andrew Hood Updated July 4, 2026 02:36PM Jonas Vingegaard in the yellow jersey and Tadej Poga\u010dar left chasing \u2014 no one expected to see that in the opening stage of the 2026 Tour de France. The Tour\u2019s experimental team time trial did exactly what organizers hoped for Saturday in steamy Barcelona. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2027448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2027448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2027448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2027448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2027448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Visma-Lease](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2284650232.jpg?width=3840&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
![\"Tadej](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2284075498.jpg?width=3840&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
![\"Isaac](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2284062321.jpg?width=3840&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")