Tim Wellens is a man who knows the ins and outs of the breakaway. He recently took the Belgian national road title with a nearly 42 km solo move, and he's won stages of the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España from breakaways. He's also been part of any number of unsuccessful ones and is a frequent-enough participant in them that I've turned it into a verb: Wellensing.
But when the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider rather casually rolled off the front of the peloton with 37 km to go on stage 3 of the 2025 Tour de France, he didn't have anything like stage glory on the mind, even though a win in Dunkirk would have completed the Grand Tour trilogy for him. When he sat up and was re-caught just 12 km later, it became clear that he had a far different goal instead: taking the polka-dot jersey of the leader of the King of the Mountains competition.
But even that wasn't the only goal. As much as the intention was for Wellens to wear the jersey, it was also for team leader Tadej Pogačar, who started the day in polka dots, not to wear it. "Last night we were talking about it. Tadej is used to wearing leader's jerseys but I said I wanted to do that too. 'No problem; go get it,' he said," Wellens told Sporza at the finish.
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