"The yellow jersey, that is what everyone is looking at" - Dylan Groenewegen takes aim at Tour de France's opening day
Cycling
In modern cycling there is more and more climbing in the opening days of Grand Tours. If it's not a time-trial, then certainly we've got hills or even a stage for the climbers right from the start in all Grand Tours. In 2025 that trend is broken at the Tour de France with a day for the sprinters on stage 1 which will give away a now rare chance at the yellow jersey.
"It is not easy to compete against a Mathieu van der Poel lead-out. It is up to us to make a better plan for that and to do better than in previous years. Although I think we have done well in phases as well," Groenewegen said in an interview with In de Leiderstrui.
Team Jayco AlUla have in Elmar Reinders and Luka Mezgec the key support men for the Dutchman, a strong leadout, but nowadays many more teams have strong leadouts and it becomes often a fight for wheels of one leadout, instead. A tricky situation.
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Groenewegen sacrificed a bit of pure speed for climbing legs back in 2023, in an attempt to better match the new wave of sprinters who can do almost anything. But in the end it wasn't worth the price. "Due to races that were just a little bit tougher than we wanted, things went the wrong way in 2023. With a Dauphiné added to that, I was just a little too much on the climbing side. I climbed very well in the Tour at the time, it was very easy and fun. But in the end, I didn't buy a victory for it," he explains.
"That's why we changed that and we did win. In the first week I was very good and we had put everything on that, to have the speed then", he said of this season, where he won the Dutch national championships and stage 6 of the Grand Boucle.
And in 2025, such a win could earn him a yellow jersey, a particular goal for the 31-year old: "This year, the Tour de France is already a great opportunity for sprinters with the first stage in line. And if you don't win that, there are still chances to win in the days after. The yellow jersey, that is what everyone is looking at. I want to stay fit for that in the spring".
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- It's not a certainty but he would have been far ahead if not for that mechanical based on the outcome that we saw unfold. If I'm not mistaken he only lost a little time on one mountain stage after that issue but regained it, I can't remember which stages though. I'd have to look up the stage data. Although I'm sitting here with a viral sinus infection today, so I might go look it up since I'm not doing much else lolawp03-01-2025
- Really??? How do you know he wouldn’t have crashed and abandoned? You can’t use ifs to prove certainties. If one little thing had changed in history, there’d be no America or it’d be German or there’d never have been humans to cycle or we’d have continued with electric cars 130 years ago. If Jonas hadn’t waited when Tadej crashed in 2022 he might also not have won. You can regret things didn’t go the way you wanted but you’ll never know how they would have gone if you change ANY detail. We have all escaped death or disaster by seconds or minutes or a complete turn in events at some point in life and would do well to remind ourselves of it when contemplating possible outcomes.Mistermaumau03-01-2025
- Yes and also don't forget that Tadej is about o years younger the Jonas and was technically still developing. It's a funny thing to say but it's true. Remco is still developing to as he's currently 25 until the 25th of January. Age does play a part, either good or bad.awp03-01-2025
- Have you seen his schedule already?Mistermaumau03-01-2025
- It was no surprise really, we know from enough experience that Jonas recovers better and with a rest day that may have made a bigger difference. We also know that once you can tell a rider is tired you know he’s going to underperform significantly when under pressure often leading to cracking (paying the price for riding a tempo you can’t sustain on that day) so it wasn’t exactly clairvoyance if he knew he’d be able to recover and ride “normally”.Mistermaumau03-01-2025
- Why, do we really still need others to market products to us? I mean, most of us already have everything we need, the things we want are easier to look for yourself than waiting for someone to try to sell it to you. Personally, I’m also better at knowing what I want or like than google, sm or any outside influencer, perhaps because they couldn’t scrape enough data off me or because no AI is I enough to extrapolate what I’d be interested in? In fact, I have to laugh/worry and question big brother Guggi, for all their AI and quantum computing prowess, how come nobody there has realised that there’s very little point to keep pushing a product in your face once you’ve already bought it, yet it happens systematically, coz they haven’t figured out the weak link in their scheme.Mistermaumau03-01-2025
- A lot of Portuguese can say the same about Salazar, he was always good to me, I never heard or saw anything. You don’t hear too many publically defending him.Mistermaumau03-01-2025
- If Tadej hadn't had that mechanical on stage 7 of the 2020 Tour he would have been in the lead earlier.awp03-01-2025
- Yes he had a great tt on stage 16 and he put mega time into Tadej on stage 17.awp03-01-2025
- What's your comment about ? Tadej is only going to do E3, Gent Wevelgem and Flanders. The other guys are going to have chances at the other classics, Omloop, Kurne, Salmin, Antwerp... And some other cobbled classics.alsene03-01-2025