Olympic and world time trial champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) duly delivered on his stage favourite status on stage 5 of the Tour de France, powering to victory in the 33km time trial in Caen as Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) took yellow.
Evenepoel recorded a time of 36:42 to take the stage win, whilst Pogačar finished second, 16 seconds down on the Belgian but with enough time to take the race lead for the first time in this Tour.
Third place on the day went to European champion Edoardo Affini (Visma-Lease a Bike), who set a fast time early on and held off everyone but Evenepoel and Pogačar.
Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) put in a valiant attempt to try and hold onto yellow, but ultimately finished 18th, handing the race lead over to Pogačar.
It was a difficult day for Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), who lost 1:21 to Evenepoel, and 1:05 to Pogačar in a blow to his GC position after just five stages.
"Because of course big guys like Edoardo, they can do these courses very well as well. Also they can save a little bit more in the finals like yesterday," Evenepoel said at the finish when asked if he knew he had the upper hand on stage 5.
"So I knew I had a good chance, but of course the legs still have to be there and everything has to go to plan. In the end I think it was pretty good. I didn't really feel like I could go any faster, so I think in general I'm happy with the result, of course. It's a second stage win for our team, it's super nice."
Evenepoel went through the first two time checks down on the fastest times, but credited his win to his steady pace, not going out too fast as some of the riders who were faster than him at the intermediates may have.
"I kind of pushed pretty steady, every slightly uphill part I pushed harder than the downhills of course, but I think my strongest point was that I kept the same pace in the end as in the first 10k, so I think that really put up my pace and my speed," he explained.
"It's also what we saw in the intermediates, that I was always going up, and also still gaining time in the last kilometres, so I think I paced it perfectly and everything was on point."
Thanks to his efforts – and Vingegaard's bad day – Evenepoel is up to second overall, 42 seconds down on Pogačar. Vingegaard moves down one place to fourth, 1:13 down on the lead, whilst a hugely-impressive ride from local rider Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) moved him to third overall.
Van der Poel moves down to sixth overall, with his focus likely to shift to stage wins and the green jersey, whilst the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe duo of Florian Lipowitz and Primož Roglič both moved into the top 10 after the TT.
How it unfolded
The 33km time trial starting and finishing in Caen was flat and relatively straightforward, meaning it was a day for the specialists, where power counted. Of the first starters, Iván Romeo (Movistar) set the early benchmark, whilst Luke Plapp (Jayco AlUla) started fast but paid for it in the end and faded.
Romeo's time in the hot seat was short, as he was soon knocked off the top spot by European champion Edoardo Affini (Visma-Lease a Bike), who took a big chunk out of his time, stopping the clock at 37:15.
Bruno Armirail (Groupama-FDJ) came painfully close to beating Affini's time, two seconds adrift, and was clearly upset that he hadn't done so. But other than the French national champ, no other riders for a long time came close to troubling the Italian's time, or even the top five. During the middle part of the day, only Tobias Foss (Ineos Grenadiers) posted a time worth noticing, at 38:07.
The first of the GC riders to set off was Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who had a largely unimpressive ride, and all eyes were on the bigger names still to come. In fact, Roglič would end up losing 21 seconds to his teammate and potential GC contender Florian Lipowitz.
The favourite all day, Evenepoel started fast on his golden bike, and passed the first time check three seconds down on Plapp's fastest time, but with the expectation that he would pace his effort better than the Australian did, and well up on Affini.
At time check two, the Belgian was still eight seconds down, likely due to the headwind in the first part of the course for the later riders, though he was still faster than Pogačar and Vingegaard.
However, he turned red to green at time check three, going 11 seconds faster than Affini there as the stage win swung back in his favour. With a sprint to the line, Evenepoel stopped the clock 33 seconds faster than Affini, in a time that wouldn't be beaten, delivering him to his second Tour de France stage victory.
Pogačar put it all down to try and come as close to Evenepoel as possible, rattling through the corners and even having a few sketchy moments, which wasn't enough to beat Evenepoel but did earn him yellow, finishing just 16 seconds down on the world champion.
It was a much less successful day for Vingegaard, usually known as a strong time trialist, who appeared to struggle early on and shipped a minute and more to his main yellow jersey rivals.
Outside of the top three and the GC story, white jersey Kévin Vauquelin put in a TT of a lifetime to finish fifth on the day, losing white to Evenepoel but cementing his local hero status, whilst Lipowitz finished sixth in what will be a boost to his GC campaign. After "flying too close to the sun", as he put it, Plapp held on to finish ninth.
As expected, the GC has been reshuffled on the roads of Caen, with Vingegaard the clear biggest loser, and Pogačar in the driving seat early on, but with 16 stages and thousands of metres of climbing still to come, there is still a big overall fight to come in this Tour.
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