“How the hell do you miss a group of 40 guys” – Armstrong, Wiggins, and Hincapie mystified by Tour de France stage 1 chaos
Cycling
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.
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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.
Fin MajorCycling Journalist
Fin Major is a UK-based writer at CyclingUpToDate and has been part of the team since 2024. He is the site’s main writer for FAQs and evergreen explainers and has written around 2,000 pieces for the platform. Alongside this work, he focuses on in-depth analysis and covers the biggest races on the calendar, including the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta a España, providing clear context around performance trends, tactics, and key storylines.
In his reporting, Fin uses reputable data sources such as ProCyclingStats for results, statistics, and historical context. He places strong emphasis on careful sourcing, editorial accuracy, and updating articles promptly when new, verified information becomes available. Outside of writing, Fin is an active cyclist, which supports his practical understanding of the sport and its demands.
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- for a medical chief to throw things like is just bad. There are already radios which were banned for spectacle. allow radios. Gps trackers are not a complete solutionabstractengineer07-11-2026
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