Frenchman Romain Bardet is the first yellow jersey of the 2024 Tour de France thanks to his victory in the first stage between Florence and Rimini on a rugged 206-kilometer course on Saturday in Italy.
The dsm-firmenich PostNL team negotiated its day perfectly with the Dutchman Frank van den Broek as a scout in the day’s attack and Bardet who counter-attacked 50 miles from the finish.
The duo resisted in extremis the return of a reduced peloton led by Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), 3rd, ahead of the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates), 5 seconds behind. Maxim Van Gils (Lotto Dstny) completed the top 5. Remco Evenepoel finished in the top 10 (9th). For his last Tour de France, at 33 years old, Bardet signed the 11th victory of his career. It is his 4th victory in the Grande Boucle, but the last one dates back to 2017.
For its first big start in Italy, the Tour offered an arduous first day, with 7 2nd and 3rd category climbs, which has already taken a serious toll on the body in temperatures around 30 degrees.
Norwegian Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility) took the first polka dot jersey for best climber. In the hunt to hold (solely) the record for the number of stage wins (34, with Eddy Merckx, since 2021) in the Tour de France, Mark Cavendish (Astana), 39 years old) was in big trouble from the first climb of the day. Halfway through the race, despite the help of four of his teammates, Cavendish was already sailing more than twelve minutes behind the leading group.
Jonas Rickaert (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and the Dutchman Fabio Jakobsen (dsm-firmenich PostNL) accompanied them. His delay will be estimated at more than half an hour. His teammate at Astana, the Italian Michele Gazzoli, was the first to retire from the Tour.
tour de france roman bardet
