Wow van Aert
There aren’t too many words that can fully describe the scope of the performance that Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) has put together so far at this Tour de France. The variety of immensely strong efforts, the majestic force of his massive attack on the final climb and the spectacle of a win in the yellow jersey are what will be remembered from these early stages.
Stage 4 was supposed to be a sprint stage, but van Aert blew that script to pieces with his ridiculous solo move.
He now sits 25 seconds ahead of Yves Lampaert (QuickStep Alpha Vinyl), I think it’s far to say that it looks impossible barring mishap that he’ll fall out of yellow before Stage 7 finishes atop Planche des Belles Filles.
Contenders caught a bit on the hop
Jumbo-Visma took the race by the scruff of its neck on the final climb, catching out a number of riders with general classification ambitions as well as the riders who were more predictably dropped.
Van Aert pushed clear with teammate Jonas Vingegaard and Adam Yates (INEOS Grenadiers), though a well-positioned Primož Roglič couldn’t handle the pace. Van Aert’s relentless acceleration was enough to drop his two companions just before the top and rather than wait up, van Aert pushed on to the eventual victory.
Defending champ Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) was out of position at the base of the climb and missed the elite selection, though he made up a lot of ground to be one of the first over the top after Vingegaard and Yates. He met up and shared a joke with van Aert post-stage as he warmed down as van Aert asked him if he’d been surprised.
"A little bit! It's good that you dropped your guys also. I was lucky," said Pogačar, who seems to get on well with everyone in the peloton.
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A commanding lead for green
What will be a bit lost in the immensity of van Aert’s performance and the extension of his lead in yellow is that he now has a commanding lead in the green jersey standings, though it might be a while before he actually wears it with yellow taking precedence.
Van Aert now has 170 points and a lead of 61 points over Fabio Jakobsen (QuickStep Alpha Vinyl), who could only manage 13th on the stage, with a number of sprinters clearly missing legs in the final dash to the line with the difficulty of the last 10 kilometres of racing.
Jakobsen won’t be able to make up the difference even if he claims a sprint stage win and van Aert scores nothing, so the lead is significant. It may well be that the Belgian star claims the sort of lead that leads to everyone else in with a shot at green effectively giving up, with a 50-point finish on Stages 5, 6 and 8 all suiting van Aert much better than his pure sprinter rivals.
Peter Sagan (TotalEnergies) is on 80 points and has been friskier in this Tour de France than in recent years. He will likely keep van Aert honest on these harder stages, but it’s clear that van Aert is faster on the flat and better elsewhere than the seven-time green jersey winner.
Philipsen pulls out all the stops
Yes, there was an embarrassing mistaken celebration, but when you look back at Jasper Philipsen’s ride, you can see why he didn’t notice van Aert up the road. The Belgian sprinter got continually shuffled back on his leadout man’s wheel in the final kilometre, to the point that he was five lengths off the lead and without a leadout rider ahead of him when he tried to make up ground on the best-positioned sprinter Alexander Kristoff (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux).
He split a tiny gap between Kristoff and the barriers, and accelerated again to win the bunch sprint comfortably. Given most other sprinters couldn’t muster a proper effort, Philipsen looks really strong for the following stages.
The Tour de France heads to the cobbles for Stage 5, the first time in four years that the peloton has had to navigate the infamous pave featured in Paris-Roubaix. Watch from 9.20pm AEST on the SBS SKODA Tour Tracker, with the SBS television and SBS On Demand broadcast beginning at 9.30pm AEST.
