Adam Yates made good on UAE Team Emirates designating him as co-leader with Tadej Pogačar, breaking away on the final climb and descent of stage 1 with his twin brother Simon and pulling away slightly in the final 200 meters to take the stage victory and first yellow jersey of the 2023 Tour de France. Here’s what you need to know:
- Adam Yates took advantage of big crowds on the final climb, the Côte de Pike, to get a small gap. Simon bridged across. “I didn’t know if I should work with him,” said Adam at the finish. “So I asked on the radio and they said ‘Yeah, go for it.'” From that point, the two worked smoothly together to pull out a 15-second lead over an elite group of 12 chasers that included Pogačar, Aussie dark horse Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe), and a strong showing from defending Tour champion Jonas Vingegaard, whose Jumbo-Visma team put three riders in the group.
- High-speed descents gave us our first bad crash of the Tour, and it was a doozy, with Movistar’s Enric Mas and EF Education-EasyPost captain Richard Carapaz going off the road on a fast left-hand curve on the descent off the Côte de Vivero with 22 km to go. Carapaz had two bloody knees and stayed sitting on the ground a long while before remounting. Grimacing, he rode gingerly to the finish and crossed the line 15 minutes down. Mas stood at the side of the road as doctors examined his right wrist and arm, with a shocked expression and that grim lack of urgency that is never a good sign. Sure enough, word soon came down that he was out the race, the first abandon of the Tour and awful news for his Movistar team.
- The day’s racing was nervous in the final 60 km, as the combination of the usual Tour nerves and big, enthusiastic crowds made for lots of jostling for position. That turned out to be some serious foreshadowing, as the tightly packed climbs meant anyone not in the first 10 riders had little hope of getting around slower riders in front. “It wasn’t easy against teams who have the numbers, like Jumbo, they have four or five guys so it’s difficult to position ourselves,” said Simon Yates at the finish. “UAE made the first initial sort of push and I couldn’t get around because the crowds are so big.” Whether by intent or fate, several big-name riders we’d have expected to be in the mix, including Soudal Quick-Step’s Julian Alaphilippe, Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers), and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) ended up being non-factors.
- EF Education did salvage one victory on the day as Neilson Powless took top KoM points on the Vivero and will wear the polka-dot jersey in stage 2. Powless duked it out with Intermarché-Circus-Wanty’s Georg Zimmerman, and the two shared a mutual-appreciation shoulder clap and smile afterward.
Only one museum in the world looks like that
Brief results
- Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) 4:42:49
- Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) @ :04
- Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates): @ :12
- Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ)
- Michael Woods (Israel-Premier Tech) @ same time
General Classification
- Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) 4:42:49
- Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) @ :08
- Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates): @ :18
- Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) @ :22
- Michael Woods (Israel-Premier Tech) @ same time
Snap analysis
- The closeness of the crowds on the final climb prevented anyone from getting around slower riders to close gaps, so we can’t read too much into the standings, but it’s worth noting who was in the first chase group and who wasn’t. Unsurprisingly, Vingegaard and Pogačar were both active at the front in the final, but so were Hindley, the Groupama-FDJ duo of David Gaudu and Thibaut Pinot, Tour de Suisse winner Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious), and Ineos Grenadiers’ Carlos Rodriguez. In a group that crossed 21 seconds behind: Romain Bardet (DSM-Firmenich), Ben O’Connor (Ag2r-Citroën), Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious), and Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers).
- Movistar is obviously worst off from stage 1, with Mas out entirely and another potential GC leader, Matteo Jorgenson, losing 2:38 on the day. EF Education’s GC fortunes are similarly grim with Carapaz injured and far down the standings. Director Juan Manuel Garate had this to say at the finish: “[Carapaz] did a fair bit of damage to his knee. At first, he wasn’t sure if he could move it because it was really hurt. He has both knees affected; in one he’ll probably need a bit of suturing, but above all it’s the internal injury where we’ll have to see what he has.” Carapaz will be taken for x-rays. “The general [classification] has already fallen behind after five hours of the Tour,” Garate said, “but we are a team that is accustomed to remaking ourselves. Neilson is in good shape, we are looking forward to the next stages and let’s see if Richard can recover as well.”
- UAE did almost no work until the final two climbs but got busy fast. Mikkel Bjerg set a furious pace up the Vivero before imploding, at which point Jumbo-Visma resumed their control of the race. But the team was also aggressive on the Pike climb, with Felix Großschartner launching a move to set up Adam Yates’ later acceleration. Yates and Pogačar were the only UAE finishers not to lose time, but with Großschartner’s move and Rafal Majka following in the second chase, they look pretty strong in the early going.
- Today was clearly not a day for the sprinters and riders like Fabio Jakobsen (Soudal Quick-Step) and Lotto DSTNY’s Caleb Ewan dropped off with a little under 40 km to go. But notably, so did TotalEnergies’ Peter Sagan. Five years ago, Sagan would have been listed as one of the top favorites for a stage like this, but his slow fade the past few years has culminated in arguably his roughest season ever, with issues on and off the bike. We’ll certainly see Jakobsen and Ewan again, perhaps as early as stage 3. But how Sagan’s Tour goes is, at this point, a total mystery.
Tomorrow’s stage
Stage 2 of the Tour is another lumpy one. The time gaps today may settle things a touch, but with sharp climbs and big crowds, it’ll likely be another nervous day. The 209 km stage from Vitoria-Gasteiz to San Sebastian is the longest in the race, and while it features slightly less climbing than stage 1 (just shy of 3,000 meters), it’s almost all backloaded. The focus is the Jaizkibel climb, 20 km from the finish. It’s well-known to riders from the San Sebastian Donostia Klasikoa one-day race. On paper, the 8.1 km at a 5.4% average is no big deal, but the steepest sections are in the second half of the climb. The ascent is always pivotal in San Sebastian and we expect it to be Sunday as well.
Quote of the day
“That last climb was just pure suffering and also a bit crazy with the fans, being almost crashed three times by Basque flags in the brakes.”
-Jai Hindley on the atmosphere on the Côte de Pike
Best of social media
As Hindley observed, the Basque fans are legendarily, um, enthusiastic about bike racing, which might need to be (physically) restrained a bit, as this tweet shows:
TV cameras didn’t catch the full crash, but here’s the moment when things went really pear-shaped for Mas and Carapaz:
Additional reading
- There’s another major stage race happening right now, and as you’d expect, Annemiek van Vleuten is all over the Giro Donne.
- With Mas out, Movistar may refocus on stages with riders like Matteo Jorgenson. Read Jen See’s profile of The Patient American and his long, improbable climb to the top of the sport.
- Kit Nicholson has more on that awful crash that knocked Mas out of the race.
- Euskadi, man … how do you pronounce Azpilicuetagaraycosaroyarenberecolarrea? Not even José Been is going to try that, but she’s got a stage-by-stage cultural guide to the Tour.
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