"That was our plan, to try to go in the wind with 20km to go" - Jonas Vingegaard lights up stage 1 of 2025 Tour de France to gain time on Evenepoel & Roglic

As he'd threatened at the start of the day, Jonas Vingegaard was active with Team Visma | Lease a Bike at the front of the peloton on stage 1 of the 2025 Tour de France, causing splits in the peloton and ultimately gaining time on two of his main GC rivals - Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic.

"We have a very strong team for this," Vingegaard had said at the start of the day, unbothered by the prospect of crosswinds, and even threatening an attack. "We said the other day that we basically have a Classics team here, so we have the team for this. And if there is an opportunity, we will try to take it." As it turned out, that was no idle message either. It was a signal of intent from the Dane.

"It was a stressful day," Vingegaard laughed when asked to recap the stage by ITV Sport in the media scrum after crossing the line. "It was a good day for us. We ended up in the first group. That was our plan, to try to go in the wind with 20km to go. The team did super well, they kept out of trouble at every point today so yeah, thanks a lot to the team first of all, and then they made the split as well. So for us, I think it was a very good day."

"To be honest, if it's not us it will be someone else trying. At that moment, we knew it would come from the side and we knew there was wind enough. So, at that point, you know that either you go or someone else will go," he continues. "That was out approach today, and yeah, we succeeded in that."

It wasn't all positive for Vingegaard and Visma though, as secondary GC option Simon Yates lost considerable time. "Of course it's not nice that Simon lost around six minutes I think," Vingegaard admits. "That was a bump in the road to be honest, but yeah, we kept ourselves safe and it was probably the most safe final it could have been. Going there on stage 1 of the Tour de France 180 riders, it would have been complete chaos."