Vingegaard and Visma win opening stage of the 113th Tour de France in Barcelona

Because Jonas Vingegaard crossed the finish line first for his team, the Dane slipped into the "Maillot jaune." It is his first yellow jersey since 2023, when he won his second Tour de France. The 29-year-old is now aiming for his third overall victory, as he made clear after the stage. "It is the biggest race in the world. It is a great win for us. I have seven teammates who sacrificed themselves for me today. I am wearing the yellow jersey, but they also won the stage and I want to thank my teammates and my team for that," Vingegaard said at the finish.

The duel of the rivals

Top Slovenian favorite Tadej Pogacar finished third with his UAE team, 12 seconds behind the winner. Vingegaard thus celebrated the first head-to-head victory in the long-awaited duel between the two rivals. In the general classification, Vingegaard sits on a time of 21:47 minutes ahead of Ganna (8 seconds back) and Pogacar (12 seconds back). Since 2021, the top two places in the overall standings have been claimed by Pogacar and Vingegaard.

Pogacar, four-time overall winner of the Tour and defending champion, is looking to complete his hat trick and his fifth overall triumph with this year's race. At the finish he spoke of roughly eleven seconds behind the Dane. On the final climb to the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, Pogacar launched one more attack, but the gap could not be reduced decisively.

Behind the leading teams, Lidl-Trek, with Spaniard Juan Ayuso, finished fourth (16 seconds back) and Red Bull–Bora–hansgrohe, with the duo of Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz, took fifth place (19 seconds back). Evenepoel, time trial world champion and Olympic champion, dropped his German teammate Lipowitz on the final climb. The Belgian ultimately conceded more than 18 seconds to Vingegaard.

Lipowitz loses on the final climb

Florian Lipowitz had to let go of his captain's pace about 2.2 kilometers from the finish and lost significant ground as a result. For the German, this meant a gap of 35 seconds to the winner – in the general classification he ended up only eighth. Isaac del Toro of Mexico is sixth (26 seconds back), and Norway's Tobias Foss is ninth (38 seconds back).

A remarkable performance was delivered by 19-year-old Paul Seixas, who is contesting his first Tour de France. The Frenchman, teammate of Felix Gall at Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale, finished tenth, 39 seconds behind Vingegaard. Gall himself is taking it easy this year and skipping the Tour to focus on another race in France. Felix Großschartner, one of Pogacar's key helpers at UAE, rolled in 2:54 minutes back.

Race flow: flat, then two climbs

The race began flat: the first roughly 16 kilometers were mostly straight and level, passing the Olympic Port and Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família. At the penultimate checkpoint, the leading teams were averaging around 59 km/h. But on the final 3.5 kilometers, two longer climbs waited, pushing some teams to their limits. The final 800-meter climb to the Olympic Stadium on Montjuïc averaged seven percent gradient.

Niklas Märkl of the Dutch team Picnic PostNL described the rest of the race after abandoning as "Horror," because the riders had to ride saturated with lactate for 15 kilometers. His team had previously planned to attack in the first five kilometers to secure the first green jersey. Egan Bernal ultimately won the green jersey after his Ineos team had led the first intermediate sprint after 5.1 kilometers.

Preview of stage two

Overall, the 113th Tour de France comprises 21 stages, 3,321.2 kilometers, and 54,450 meters of elevation. After the first stage in Barcelona, Vingegaard leads the general classification. On Sunday, stage two is on the program: 168.5 kilometers from Tarragona to Barcelona, mostly flat but featuring a second-category climb after Begues and the finishing ascent to the Castell de Montjuïc, with gradients of up to 13 percent to be tackled three times.

Further stops on the tour include a 26.1-kilometer individual time trial on July 21, 2026, between Evian-les-Bains and Thonon-les-Bains, as well as the traditional final stage on July 26, 2026, covering 133 kilometers from Thoiry to the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The Tour is the third Grand Départ in Spain, after 1992 and 2023.

A total of 23 teams took part in the team time trial, including German-speaking riders such as Jan Ullrich's successor Niklas Märkl of Picnic PostNL and Austria's Felix Großschartner of UAE. Tudor Pro Cycling Team with Marco Haller finished 17th, 1:14 minutes back; Swiss rider Yannis Voisard was the first of the Swiss Tudor team across the line at the Olympic Stadium.

Visma ends barren run

Looking at the overall standings, Vingegaard called the opening a "dream start." Although he wears the yellow jersey, the Dane repeatedly emphasized the performance of his helpers. "My teammates did an incredible job today. They were so strong that I hardly had to do anything. They brought me to the finish so I could take the stage win and the yellow jersey," he said. The first stage victory also ended a long winless streak for the Visma team at the Tour de France.

Already on Sunday, the duel between Vingegaard and Pogacar is likely to go into the next round. Stage two is largely flat, but the ascent to the Castell de Montjuïc, to be ridden three times with gradients of up to 13 percent, as well as the final 600-meter climb to the Olympic Stadium offer Pogacar an opening chance as an attacker to cut the 12-second gap – and perhaps take over the yellow jersey as early as the second day.