"It's the rider whose team is aggressive on the front who pays for it" - Robbie McEwen's analysis of Tour de France opening week

The first week of the Tour de France is over. It has been very long and attacked since day 1, and with five climbing challenges already, there are some conclusions that have already been taken from analysts all round.

"It's the rider whose team is aggressive on the front who pays for it. Again today, Jumbo-Visma went to the front, did all the pace setting and then Vingegaard lost time," Robbie McEwen said in analysis of the first week in 'The Breakaway'. "The time when Pogacar's team has done it, he's lost time. It's going to come to a point when they're going to realize and go 'alright, no more riding on the front!"

Whilst in the opening two days UAE voluntarily burned through energy to try and create gaps - whilst on stage 5 they chased down a day-long breakaway - on stages 6 and 9 it was Jumbo-Visma who pushed the pace on the ascents to then lose time. After the first week only 17 seconds separate Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, in favour of the Dane, however those 17 seconds do not give justice to these nine days of racing which have seen both riders take multiple hits at each other.

"They know they want to make it hard for Jonas because they believe that's better for him. It's almost inevitable what's going to happen – there's no shocks," Adam Blythe said of Jumbo-Visma. "The team does all the work, Sepp Kuss comes to the front, ramps it up, drops everyone behind apart from two-three guys, and then Jonas goes on the attack. That didn't happen today, Tadej went on the attack instead."

At Puy de Dôme Pogacar gained 8 seconds on Vingegaard with a late attack, as he did in Cauterets. In bonifications he took time on the two Basque days early in the race, however all those little time gains are only enough to keep him close to Vingegaard, who won over a minute with a brutal attack on stage 5's first mountain challenge at the Col de Marie Blanque. After both teams rode the first days aggressively to try and take time on each other, stage 9 saw for the first time both taking it easy and let the breakaway gather many minutes before having their own battle.

"There must be a point where Jumbo-Visma go 'OK, we're going to try something different. Even though we've got the yellow jersey, we're going to try and put one rider in the break, we're going to try and stress UAE out a little bit, we're not going to take the responsibility, we're going to chuck it all on them and make their life hard'," he concluded.