“How the hell do you miss a group of 40 guys” – Armstrong, Wiggins, and Hincapie mystified by Tour de France stage 1 chaos

Stage 1 of the 2025 Tour de France delivered what Lance Armstrong called a “perfect start” for the two big contenders, and a disaster for a few others. In front of the GC men, Alpecin delivered a text book sprint, as Mathieu van der Poel and then Kaden Groves launched Jasper Philipsen to a dominant stage one victory, and the yellow jersey.

On The Move podcast, Armstrong, joined by Sir Bradley Wiggins and George Hincapie, dissected the chaos, the winners, and the early damage done in what they’d forecasted to be a brutal opening week.

“If you're Tade Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard sitting in the team bus right now, you're like, ‘Okay, yeah, that was a win.’ They think this is a perfect start for them. And they are right,” Armstrong said.

For riders like Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic, though, the Tour unravelled early. Both missed the key split and lost 49 seconds on GC. It was a scenario the Move crew had predicted in detail the day before.

“This is all what we talked about yesterday,” Armstrong said. “You cannot miss a group of 40 guys.”

Hincapie echoed that frustration and disbelief at how the race fractured so quickly and how unprepared some teams looked.

“I could just imagine Johan Bruyneel in the bus right now yelling his ass off at us going, ‘How the hell do you miss a group of 40 guys?’ You know there's wind coming. There's no surprises here. It's going to split,” Hincapie said.

Wiggins was blunt about the stakes.

“It went as we expected, didn’t it, that first stage. But at the same time, I think the casualties are very few… If it's a taste of what's to come the next few days, then we've got a great race on our hands,” he said.

Team Visma | Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates - XRG controlled the front with four or five riders each. Even in the early chaos, crashes, mechanicals, wind, Pogacar and Vingegaard were right where they needed to be.

“This was a great day for them,” Hincapie said. “When you're coming to a first stage of the Tour de France and you're only coming in with 35 guys, you're like, ‘Thank God I'm not worrying about crashing now.’”

“Visma had four or five guys up there, super well represented. It's a win for them,” he continued.

The surprise came from the Scandinavian upstart team Uno-X, which put four riders in the front group and even snagged a podium place.

“Being an upstart team, man, that's impressive,” Armstrong said. “What a way to start the Tour de France and third place nonetheless.”

That podium belonged to Jasper Philipsen, who picked up his 10th stage win in four years and wore the yellow jersey for the first time.

“Incredible. I mean, on all levels, incredible,” Armstrong said. “This guy’s just won his 10th stage win in four years. First yellow jersey.”

Wiggins acknowledged the firepower behind that finish.

“That's the way you win a sprint,” he said. “It obviously helps to have a motorcycle like Mathieu van der Poel starting the lead out and a Caden Groves who’s won endless stages in Grand Tours.”

The team dynamic, or lack thereof, was central to Armstrong’s critique of Soudal – Quick-Step and Evenepoel’s day.

“To me the team feels rudderless,” he said. “If Johan Bruyneel was running that team… that whiteboard just got erased.”

He also called out the lack of response from other favorites, “Roglic’s got a really great team. He's very good in the crosswind. I don't understand how these guys missed it.”

But Hincapie wasn’t writing anyone off yet, “I mean, the guy (Remco) can make pretty much any selection there is… still win the time trial and could still take the jersey.”

As for Roglic, the consensus was that his Tour ambitions weren’t dead, yet.

“He's been behind in other Grand Tours and clawed his way back,” Hincapie said. “He's got the monster of Pogacar 40 seconds ahead of him now and Jonas Vingegaard, which is not an ideal situation, but I'm a big fan of his.”

Wiggins speculated Roglic may have been holding back due to bad memories, “He's fallen out of a few of France's crashes the last three years, I believe. Do you think that was probably on his mind a little bit today?” he asked.

The peloton’s mental load also came up, especially for those already on the back foot: “You’re sitting there mentally, you're like, I can't imagine having been in that position. I'd be in the bus like, ‘Oh no, did I just lose the thing?’” Armstrong said.

Overall, the message from the The Move analysts was, you can’t win the Tour de France in the first week, but as is evident, you can lose it, or certainly at least make your job considerably harder.