Evenepoel and Soudal-Quick Step dozed off, Vingegaard and Pogacar took advantage: "We got a slap in the face"

“This is not what we came here for,” CEO Jurgen Foré said with an uncomfortable smile after the race on VTM. “We weren't able to sprint and lost time. I haven't heard exactly what happened, but it was clear that we were too far back when the peloton split. When you come here with a sprinter, the aim is always to be in the first group, so we were simply too far back as a team, in the last 30% of the peloton.”

Visma | Lease a Bike went full throttle at that moment, so it was game over. "Today we lost, and tomorrow is another day. We had two riders in the front, and the rest were around us. But we shouldn't look at others; we weren't where we needed to be, and that was the intention with a sprint train here. We had to avoid these kinds of situations, but we fell into the trap anyway."

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After freshening up, Evenepoel had a clear opinion on VTM about what went wrong in the first stage. He says that at the moment the echelon formed, he was together with his teammates, but: “We didn't think it was going very fast, but it still split. That's a shame because we were doing really well all day, and we probably allowed ourselves to doze off by the serene vibe in the peloton. Then it splits, which is a mistake on our part as a team.”

Evenepoel understood that Foré was pretty pissed off. "It was different for him because we wanted to try to win the stage with Tim Merlier. It's also a shame for me in terms of the GC, but there are still twenty days to go. These are wasted seconds, but last year, I was already 40 seconds behind Pogacar after four stages; now, after just one stage, I'm already 40 seconds behind. Ultimately, we have to live with it and focus on tomorrow."

It's not difficult to stay calm because there are still 20 days to go. It's just disappointing, but we can't change anything now. We must learn from this and ensure that we don't make the same mistake tomorrow. We can't doze off because this is the Tour de France. A moment of inattention like this will come back to haunt us. We got a slap in the face for being a little too relaxed. Winning the yellow jersey on day 5 in the time trial? Let's focus on tomorrow's stage."