Tour de France: “The heat killed me”, the peloton already marked by the first stage

One by one, gaunt bodies advance on their steel mounts, tumble off them and rush to take refuge in the buses parked on the edge of the Rimini beach. It is there, in this small air-conditioned space, that they still breathe best. The sea air has done nothing. The heat has crushed the road of this first stage between Florence, in Tuscany, and the seaside town of Emilia-Romagna on the shores of the Adriatic. The mercury has climbed to 37 °C in places, making the incessant leg-breakers of the route insurmountable. And the damage already considerable.

“I didn’t know where I was, now I know,” sighed David Gaudu before going to lock himself in and freshen up in his rolling cabin. The leader of Groupama-FDJ cracked 73 km from the finish, dropping 29′9′’ to the main leaders who arrived five seconds behind the winner Romain Bardet. “I haven’t recovered from Covid, I have no strength on the bike,” added the former 4th in the Tour in 2022. I hung on as best I could but I didn’t hold on.”

39 minutes pour Cavendish !

The asphalt was smooth but the slide was rough through the Apennines. The mountain, scattered in samples, invited itself from the start under a milky sky and in a suffocating atmosphere. Mark Cavendish, the British sprinter from Astana, ill, also paid the price, finishing at 39′12′’ but avoiding elimination, unlike his Italian teammate Michele Gazzoli, forced to abandon, the only one of during the day, victim of the heat. “It wasn’t easy,” said the 39-year-old rider, record holder for stage victories (34) with Eddy Merckx. It was so hot, so hot. But we did it, we managed to meet the deadline. »

Mathieu van der Poel, announced as a possible winner of the stage, also dropped out very quickly, leaving 18′46′’ in the operation. Like Lenny Martinez, the young hopeful of Groupama-FDJ, who arrived with his leader David Gaudu. “This failure is a bit of a mixture of everything, he sighs, his face frozen. I got heatstroke. But we expected it. We knew that on this course, the heat would be the challenge of the day.”

Vingegaard and Pogacar without worry

His teammate Valentin Madouas fared better. Having escaped for a long time, he believed in his chances before giving in when Romain Bardet accelerated. “When you make efforts like that in 35 or 40 °C, you end up paying for them,” explained the 2023 French champion. “I put myself in the red trying to score points for the mountain classification (2nd). The heat killed me.” The big leaders, however, did not expose themselves. Jonas Vingegaard, the Dane winner of the last two editions, even seemed particularly at ease. He followed the pace set by the teammates of his rival Tadej Pogacar, then by his own partners from Visma-Lease a Bike riding for Wout Van Aert, 3rd in the stage and first in the sprint.

Vingegaard crossed the line without any problem with the peloton made up of around fifty runners, then he hung a backpack larger than him on his shoulders before heading towards his bus. His first day of racing since his fall on April 4 at the Tour of the Basque Country seems to have completely reassured him. The two weeks of hospitalization due to a pneumothorax (hole in the pleura) with lung damage and its truncated preparation seem very far away now. Enough to calmly approach the second stage, this Sunday between Cesenatico and Bologna, with an even more demanding route but under milder temperatures.