Tour de France – Romain Bardet (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) wins the 1st stage and takes the yellow jersey

Exceptional. Magnificent. Grandiose. There are no superlatives to describe the incredible performance achieved by Romain Bardet, winner of this first stage of the 2024 Tour de France. Having gone out 50 kilometres from the finish in the San Leo, the Frenchman from DSM-Firmenich PostNL came back to his teammate Frank Van den Broek to launch into a fantastic duo towards Rimini. Despite the hard work of the teammates of the few sprinters still present in the peloton and the headwind in the final, the two men held on to allow Bardet to claim his 11th career victory and his very first yellow jersey. Behind, Wout Van Aert (Visma | Lease a Bike) settled the peloton sprint.

No one saw this one coming. See victory escape the peloton, why not on condition of witnessing a big selection and a fight between big names. But that was never really the case, despite the hellish tempo of the UAE-Emirates on the hardest climb of the day, Barbotto (5.9km at 7.6%). A crazy pace which completely blew up half of the peloton, including the two leaders of Groupama-FDJ, Lenny Martinez and David Gaudu, who lost almost half an hour and have already said goodbye to their general hopes. Most of the sprinters also gave up, but not Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), who barely held on.

We then thought we would see a fight between the survivors of the morning breakaway, Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ) and Frank Van den Broek, and the peloton but Romain Bardet turned everything upside down. While the UAE-Emirates had just stopped rolling, the Frenchman – already attacking in the first kilometers in vain – placed a sharp attack on the climb of San Leo, a little over 50 kilometers from the finish. Quickly catching up with Van den Broek, who had let himself be dropped, the Tricolore first stuck back to the breakaway before quickly taking off with his teammate. With more than two minutes ahead on the climb of San Marin, the DSM-Firmenich PostNL duo could then believe it. But that’s where the difficulties began.

With a strong headwind in the finale (15km/h and gusts to 30km/h) and a coalition between the EF Education-Easy Post of Alberto Bettiol, the Lidl-Trek of Mads Pedersen and the Visma | Lease a Bike by Wout Van Aert, the leading duo’s lead quickly disappeared and they only had a 45” lead with 9km to go. But the sprinters’ teammates ended up being worn out by the 3,600m of positive altitude difference and stumbled, failing a few meters from the heroic duo of the DSM-Firmenich PostNL. Giving his all in each relay, struggling to pass even though he seemed to be struggling, Romain Bardet ended up going ahead at the very last moment to claim his 4th stage victory in the Tour de France but, above all, his first yellow jersey, at 33 years old. Van den Broek will happily settle for the white jersey and the green jersey.

Behind, Mads Pedersen was not even able to dominate (7th) the peloton sprint, leaving Wout Van Aert to go for 3rd place and the bonuses, just in front of Tadej Pogacar (UAE-Emirates) not far from gleaning a few seconds . But the favorites ultimately remained calm on this first stage and all the big names finished together, 5” from the victorious duo. Among the losers of the day, we must look to distant outsiders, like Alexey Lutsenko (Astana, +24’40”) or the Frenchman Kevin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels, +29’14”). Dropped on the first ascent of the day, visibly the victim of sunstroke, Mark Cavendish went through hell but the Briton made it back on time. Far, very far from the joy of a Romain Bardet finally rewarded.