I don't know if this community is active enough yet to have a pre, race and result thread per stage, so let's see how we get on with one thread.
Really looking forward to this stage. I think it will make a great start to the Tour de France. My money is on van Aert for this stage he goes up the mountains a bit better the MvdP and he has the best final sprint of whoever will be left.
There are a lot of opportunities for both of them in the upcoming stages. I hope Mas will recover in time for the Vuelta now. Haven't seen anything yet about the extent of his injuries.
It's better than JV had last year because this time around the team with a sole leader has a poor stable of mountain domestiques. They don't even have to work to isolate Jonas. It will just happen at the end of stages and he will have to mark both riders (assuming yates' form isn't a mirage and noone on JV surprises by stepping up a level)
Yep, great stage! Just watched the rest this morning. Gotta feel for Carapaz and Mas. Hopefully Carapaz starts stage 2, but he wasn't looking good at all.
Yeah, Gregaard is usually not a strong rider. But as he won the polka jersey in Paris Nice, there's some hype about him being able to wear it in TDF. But I find it unlikely he will win it in the end.
But now he's in the breakaway, so looking good so far :)
I haven’t been keeping up on much pre-tour coverage this year, are there any big storylines to pay attention to? Or just kinda expecting Vingegaard and Pogacar to be the favorites for GC again?
Yes, but Pog is a bit of an unknown since he's coming back from an injury and maybe hasn't trained enough. UAE brought Yates in as co-captain. So a bit of uncertainty on UAE.
Yates said in the interview after the race that Pogacar was king. I guess that means he's going to support Pog instead of ride for his own classification from now on.