Lost (or Not) to the Gravels of Time

A rest day reset after an incredible first week of racing at the Tour de France

Photo Credit: Charly Lopez, ASO

As the Tour de France hits its first of two rest days I feel confident in saying this: I have no idea who is going to win the polka dot jersey as the race’s King of the Mountains.

The current standings look like this:

1. Jonas Abrahamsen, Norway, Uno-X Mobility, 33 points

2. Tadej Pogačar, Slovenia, UAE Team Emirates, 20 points

3. Valentin Madouas, France, Groupama-FDJ, 16 points

Abrahamsen, 28, has been In the Dots since the first opportunity, and his aggressive riding has made him one of the breakout stars of this Tour. But despite the race hitting the Col du Galibier on Stage 4, the big mountains are all yet to come. Put another way: One rider could score more KOM points on Stage 19 alone than have been awarded to Abrahamsen, Pogačar and Madouas combined over the first nine stages. This race-within-a-race has yet to begin.

The other three recognized classifications are shaping up pretty clearly.

First up: the green jersey for the points classification. Before the race, I predicted a brisk battle for the green jersey between pure sprinters Fabio Jakobsen and Jasper Philipsen¹ and hybrid sprinter/classics specialists Arnaud de Lie, Wout van Aert², and Mads Pedersen.

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I make a lot of predictions, and most of them are wrong. Few of them are more wrong than this one look to be through three weeks. Jakobsen has thus far failed to seriously contest a stage win; his best finish through nine stages is fifth. Instead, he’s having a dominant campaign in the battle for the lanterne rouge, the rider who completes the Tour in last place. Jakobsen has lost more than two hours in a little over a week, and finished five of nine stages either last overall or with the last group on the road.

Pedersen crashed on Stage 5 and abandoned three days later. Van Aert has been glued to Jonas Vingegaard on domestique duty, and Philipsen has been unable to either get to the front of the pack or beat Biniam Girmay once he gets there.

On paper, Girmay is the kind of sprightly, versatile rider who usually does well in the green jersey chase: Fast enough to pick up points in bunch sprints but also able to hang in a breakaway, over hills, or across unpaved roads. He was one of my sentimental favorites, but he entered the Tour about two years removed from any kind of performance that would’ve led me to consider him a threat.

Except he’s won two sprint stages so far: One on a dead-flat finish, the other on a stage with a slight uphill kick. He finished at the front of the second group on Sunday’s gravel stage. And most important, the wealth has been spread around among the other sprinters in terms of points. Mark Cavendish and Dylan Groenewegen have both won stages, but only one. De Lie, whom I considered the man to beat, has been absolutely nowhere.

Over the past 10 years, the average green jersey winner has gone into Paris³ with a mean of 407 points and a mean of 405 1/2 points.⁴ Which oversells the target a little; those averages include a couple blowout wins. Four of the past five green jersey winners have had a total in the 300s, and the last time second place scored more than 300 points was 2015.

Barring a crash or finishing outside the time limit, Girmay is at least halfway home. The current standings:

1. Biniam Girmay, Eritrea, Intermarché-Wanty, 224 points

2. Jasper Philipsen, Belgium, Alpecin-Deceuninck, 128 points

3. Jonas Abrahamsen, Norway, Uno-X Mobility, 107 points

4. Anthony Turgis, France, TotalEnergies, 96 points

5. Arnaud de Lie, Belgium, Lotto-Dstny, 92 points

What conclusions can we draw from this?

Well, Abrahamsen has been sucking up green jersey points for the same reason he’s been sucking up polka dot jersey points: He’s been in the break three times in the first week of the race. Turgis is a handy classics rider with a second place in Milan-San Remo on his CV a couple years back, but he’s not a green jersey threat; 70 of his 96 points came on Sunday, when he won the stage from the break and took maximum points along the way.

So Girmay doesn’t exactly have anyone breathing down his neck, but with 50 points available to the winner of a sprint stage, he’s not home free just yet, even with only four such stages remaining on the calendar. Alpecin-Deceuninck in particular has to get its shit together; three of those four remaining sprint stages come in the next four race days, and Philipsen’s misfortunes have also meant that the team has gotten zilch out of Mathieu van der Poel, who’s been shackled to Philipsen on leadout duty for most of the race.⁵

But Girmay is also extremely well-positioned to defend his lead for the rest of the Tour. It’s easy to miss how much hellacious, super-high-altitude climbing there is in the third week of the race; I think even I’ve been pretty glib about it over the past couple weeks.

I think Jakobsen, Cavendish, and Groenewegen could all end up missing a time cut. So could Philipsen, even though he’s been climbing pretty well this week.⁶ Girmay’s going to be fine in that respect. And if he can ride the occasional breakaway the way Peter Sagan and Michael Matthews did, he’ll come to Nice in green without breaking a proverbial sweat.

The white jersey (best young rider) standings after nine stages:

1. Remco Evenepoel, Belgium, Soudal Quick-Step

2. Juan Ayuso, Spain, UAE Team Emirates, + 1 minute, 43 seconds

3. Carlos Rodríguez, Spain, Ineos Grenadiers, + 1 minute, 58 seconds

4. Matteo Jorgenson, United States, Visma-Lease a Bike, +3 minutes, 30 seconds

Ayuso and Jorgenson are both pulling double duty as domestiques, as was plainly obvious on Stage 9, where Jorgenson probably had a decent shot to go up ahead and contest the stage win if he hadn’t spend the last two gravel sectors dragging Vingegaard back to Pogačar’s wheel.

The short version on this is that the white jersey is Remco’s to lose. He’s up nearly two minutes on the next rider who isn’t going to have to spend energy helping his team leader. Even if we assume Remco gets dropped by Pogačar and Vingegaard at some point in the high mountains, the same thing will probably happen to Rodríguez. Rodríguez would need one of two things to break his way: Either a catastrophic blowup from Evenepoel, or for Rodríguez to make a solo move that isn’t worth either Pogačar or Vingegaard’s effort to chase.⁷

But really, this is all tied up as part of the GC battle, which currently sits as follows:

1. Tadej Pogačar, Slovenia, UAE Team Emirates

2. Remco Evenepoel, Belgium, Soudal Quick-Step, +33 seconds

3. Jonas Vingegaard, Denmark, Visma-Lease a Bike, +1 minute, 15 seconds

4. Primož Roglič, Slovenia, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, +1 minute, 36 seconds

5. Juan Ayuso, Spain, UAE Team Emirates, +2 minutes, 16 seconds

Rodríguez and João Almeida are both within a few seconds of Ayuso, but for me, this is a three-horse race.