Nobody thought Torstein Træen, who seized the yellow jersey with a shrewd tactical ride in Tuesday’s breakaway, would win the Tour de France. And he will not. But that’s not the point.
Like the rest of the peloton – from Grand Tour winners to the inhabitants of the grupetto – the overnight race leader from first-year WorldTeam Uno-X Mobility lost time to Tadej Pogačar’s show of force on the Tourmalet during the first major mountain stage of this Tour. That much was anticipated. For Træen, for Jonas Vingegaard, for Remco Evenepoel and Paul Seixas, for everyone.
Dane Cash
How it played out, though, showed once again how the same Tour that smiles on a rider on a Tuesday can smite him on a Thursday. Træen lost time. He lost skin. We lost a hoped-for pursuit that promised some needed entertainment, tension, and character development in what feels, again, like a two-horse race. If that.
Træen started stage 6 less than a minute clear on overall time from his erstwhile breakaway companions Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost) and Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek), but a whopping 7:53 over the true classification threats, led by Pogačar and Vingegaard. That healthy gap, and the below-the-radar kind of climbing talent that’s seen him net top-10 finishes in the Vuelta a España, the Critérium du Dauphiné, and the Volta a Catalunya set up what many believed (or hoped) was a potential week-plus of dogged pursuit of a modest rider who, if absolutely everything fell his way, could make life uncomfortable for the royalty.
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