The beautiful stage starting from Florence rewards the Frenchman, who wears the yellow jersey after finishing on parade with his teammate Van den Broek. VdP is also behind, Pogacar and Vingegaard without problems
Journalist
June 29, 2024 (edited at 21:36) – MILAN
What a show, what a historic day for Italy and the Tour de France, and what a movie-like finale for France. Under a suffocating heat, especially at the start in Florence and in the first part of the stage, world cycling wrote a page to remember. And Italy deserved it, because since 1903 and 110 editions the Grande Boucle had never started from our country, which has won the Tour ten times with seven heroes: Bottecchia, Bartali, Coppi, Nencini, Gimondi, Pantani and Nibali. On the Rimini seafront, on the day of the beginning of summer vacation on the Riviera Romagnola, France granted itself a movie-like victory, in the land of Federico Fellini. Romain Bardet, at 33, took that yellow jersey that he had never won. Yes, the Frenchman from DSM who has pedaled his entire career with the burden of having to win the Tour, with a nation that hasn’t won the Grande Boucle since Hinault in 1985 and asked him every season, arrives in the first stage in Rimini in a parade with his Dutch teammate Frank Van den Broek, who was instrumental in pulling him and escorting him in the last thirty kilometers after his attack on San Leo and San Marino: that’s how they won the arm wrestling with the group, and they fooled him. Bardet wins the craziest victory of his life. At 33, in his last Tour, since he had announced his retirement at the end of the season, he wears the yellow jersey that he had always dreamed of as a child and never worn in the years in which he was forced to challenge Chris Froome and the golden years of Team Sky. Second in the 2016 Tour de France and third in 2017, in recent years Bardet had discovered Italy and the Giro, precisely to break away from that tension: last victory two years ago at the 2022 Tour of the Alps, and second in the Bocca della Selva stage at the 2024 Giro. But Bardet was silver at the 2018 Innsbruck World Championship and second in the 2024 Liège-Bastogne-Liège behind the uncatchable Pogacar. The group arrives at nothing, for the sprint of regrets: third Van Aert and fourth Pogacar, to say how good the Slovenian is, then Van Gils, Aranburu, Pedersen and Evenepoel. Among the best, also Vingegaard, Roglic, Evenepoel and Bettiol (10th), who unfortunately paid for a very fast finish.
DEPARTURE
—
Florence is tinged with yellow, tens of thousands of fans and tourists, from the meeting at the Parco delle Cascine to the starting ceremony in front of Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria and then off through Mugello, the Tuscan-Romagnolo Apennines, and the climbs of Marco Pantani. A stage in memory of Gino Bartali, Gastone Nencini and Marco Pantani, with seven climbs and 3600 meters of altitude difference, like a classic. The Barbotto painted yellow, with the writings Pantani and Pogacar alternating on the asphalt, in yellow; the fans of the Magico Pantani club, the first historic fan club of the Pirate, directed by “Bianco”, his friend from Borello, on the hills of the hinterland. And then San Leo, and San Marino, where Pantani went to train and test himself.
NEWS
—
The seven-man breakaway gets going right away, with Mohoric, Van den Broek, Abrahamsen, Madouas and Izagirre, while on the first of the seven climbs, the Tre Faggi, after just 35 km, Mark Cavendish’s ordeal begins. The British rider, chasing victory number 35 to break Merckx’s stage record, remains with 4 teammates, plus other sprinters like Jakobsen and Groenewegen, and immediately loses a teammate, Michele Gazzoli, who is also the first to retire from the 2024 Tour. The Italians in the race remain seven. 35 km from the finish, Jakobsen, the Dutchman who was the victim of a very serious accident at the 2020 Tour of Poland, goes into crisis. The team of the tricolor Bettiol, the American Ef Education Post, holds the reins of the stage. They believe in the Florentine, escort him, help him. On the Barbotto, Pogacar puts Wellens and Soler to work, and then Van Aert’s gregarious riders also accelerate: the pace increases among thousands of fans dressed in yellow, Matthews, Demare and, above all, the world champion Van der Poel break away. At the start of the Barbotto, with 75 km to go, the group was 4’10” behind the escapees: at the top, just over a minute remains. Pedersen fights and is the only sprinter in the group of big names. On the San Leo, Bardet goes away, and then Healy goes out. In San Marino, the double attack of DSM materializes, with the Frenchman Romain Bardet and the Dutchman Frank Van den Broek, while the group at 1’20” is pulled by Healy and all of Bettiol’s men. Cavendish at 29′. Down the San Marino descent, 13 km from the finish, Bardet-Van den Broek have 1’10” and Cavendish at 30’44”. Pedersen and Van Aert’s gregarious are at work, at 6 km the two have 34”, it’s a tug of war. Kelderman and Jorgenson alternate with three from Lidl: at 5 km the advantage remains at 36”, at 4 km it is 35”. At 3 km it is 20”, at 2.2 km it is 16” and Jorgenson pulls, at 1.8 km it is 12”, at 1 km it is 10”. And in the end Bardet triumphs on the best day for his team.
PLAN
—
Sunday’s second stage is the most emotional of the Tour: Cesenatico-Bologna, 199 km, the start from the home of Marco Pantani, the last to achieve the Giro and Tour double in 1998. The meeting at the stadium, then the parade will take place in front of the Spazio Pantani (the museum of the Romagna native) and he will be honored at the cemetery before the kilometer zero in Cervia in front of the Fantini Club. It will be a tour of Romagna, from Ravenna towards Brisighella, the climb of Monticino, then the Gallisterna of the 2020 Imola World Championship, the gullies in the landscape, the entrance to the F.1 circuit of Imola, the Rivazza curve and the exit from the pits. In the finale, then, there will be the double climb to San Luca, the hill overlooking Bologna: 1.9 kilometers at an average 10.6% with peaks of 19% at the iconic Curva delle Orfanelle. From the last passage, 13 km to reach the finish line in via Irnerio.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
