That first crash on stage one was not a race incident. A fan stood in the road, held up a sign, brought down Tony Martin and half the peloton, and people are calling it an unfortunate accident. It wasn't. The lads in the NDY group chat were losing their minds watching it, and they were right to.
Key Takeaways
The fan who caused the first crash needs to be prosecuted. Not fined, not shamed on social media. Prosecuted. A DSM rider abandoned the Tour de France on day one because someone stood in the road with a cardboard sign. That's not consent to a race incident — that's negligence. In law, if you consent to play a sport, you consent to contact within that sport. You do not consent to a bystander stepping onto the course and taking you out. Cycling tolerates things from fans that no other major sport would. You'd never see someone standing on the track at the Olympics or on the pitch at the Champions League final. For some reason cycling lets it slide, and then acts surprised when half the peloton goes down on stage one of the Tour de France.
Alaphilippe winning the stage is the good news. Quickstep rode the final climb perfectly, lit it up hard into the base of that 3km climb at 5.6% with sections hitting 14%, and caught van der Poel and most of the GC contenders off guard. Alaphilippe went from position two and nobody could close him. Pogačar and Roglič were marking each other instead of chasing, which tells you everything about how those two are going to ride this race. Guillaume Martin and Superman López are already 1 minute 15 seconds down after stage one. That's a brutal hole to dig out of before the race even gets to the mountains. Alaphilippe is in yellow, there's only 50 kilometres of TT, and he goes well against the clock. He won't win the Tour overall but he could wear that jersey deep into the race.
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For more on how this Tour played out for the GC contenders, the Vuelta stage 6 episode covers the Movistar situation in detail. And if you want the full story on van der Poel's Tour build-up and what Hincapie said about racing the Classics into a Grand Tour, the Hincapie episode is worth your time.