After the team time trial, we can cross out these leaders names from the Tour de France GC list

A team time trial on the first day of a Grand Tour doesn’t usually tell the whole story, but with the new format of the Tour de France, quite a few conclusions could still be drawn from Stage 1. Since the time of the team’s fastest rider counted, we’re crossing off a few team leaders whom we might have secretly jotted down in pencil somewhere for the general classification.

It became clear during the team time trial that Caja Rural and Picnic PostNL had no general classification ambitions even before the Tour de France. The Spanish team finished solo with Alex Molenaar. Sebastian Berwick, who won this year’s Tour of Turkey and finished fifth in the Tour of Slovenia, broke away, thus demonstrating his ambitions. We’ll see him back in the attack later on.

Picnic PostNL squandered a good opportunity by focusing solely on a fast first intermediate sprint, hoping that this would secure them the first green jersey of the race. For TotalEnergies, Jordan Jegat was the first to cross the line—last year’s French number ten. At Pinarello-Q36.5 and Groupama-FDJ United, the expected team leaders, Tom Pidcock and Romain Grégoire, also finished solo.

We’d better keep an eye on them for a while longer. That doesn’t apply to Michael Storer, who—after finishing seventh in the Giro d’Italia—might have had his sights set on a Tour de France general classification? No. The Australian wasn’t even the first rider from the Swiss team to finish— that honor went to Yannis Voisard. Tudor had already lost a lot of time, and the favorites hadn’t even finished yet...

Among the early favorites on the course, the time lost by Cian Uijtdebroeks (Movistar) and Kévin Vauquelin (Netcompany INEOS) was striking, but the two clearly did have general classification ambitions. Uijtdebroeks, however, had a bad day, while Vauquelin suffered a flat tire and lost a lot of time as a result.

At Jayco AlUla, however, there was a clear signal sent toward the general classification. The Australian team let Michael Matthews finish alone, which means we can rule out Ben O’Connor and any plans for a strong finish in Paris. Filippo Ganna’s solo finish for Netcompany INEOS was also an important signal. So, no Thymen Arensman for the GC.

As expected, there were fewer surprises among the last teams of the day, though it was notable that Remco Evenepoel dropped his teammate Florian Lipowitz on the final climb. XDS Astana, for its part, saw three riders take a hard fall in the first leg of the time trial, including Harald Tejada. And we had actually jotted him down in pencil as a dark horse for a top-ten finish.