Jonas Vingegaard will wear the first yellow jersey of the 2026 Tour de France after a superlative team time trial performance by his Visma-Lease a Bike squad in Barcelona.
Filippo Ganna led Netcompany-Ineos to the line as the British team finished second on the day ahead of Tadej Pogačar‘s UAE Team Emirates-XRG.
Vingegaard goes into the maillot jaune, leading Ganna by eight seconds, with Pogačar a further four seconds down as the 2022 and 2023 Tour de France winner lands the first blow in the 2026 race.
Netcompany-Ineos came into the stage as the main favourite, thanks to the team’s phalanx of time-trialling stars. The British squad put in the time to beat, covering the course in 21:55 ahead of the start of the main General Classification teams.
However, Visma-Lease a Bike roared through the middle section of the course to take the lead heading into the climbs. Davide Piganzoli and Matteo Jorgensen led Vingegaard into the final section before the Dane put his Dutch team into first place.
Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG were the final team to finish and looked to struggle in the early stages, losing Adam Yates and Nils Politt early on. The team were 13 seconds behind Visma-Lease a Bike on the final time-check and Pogačar was able to pull back just a single second on the run to the line.
The opening test of the race sets up the early general classification, with Lidl-Trek‘s Juan Ayuso into 4th, 16 seconds back, Remco Evenepoel of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in 5th at 19 seconds and young star Paul Seixas riding for Decathlon-CMA CGM the biggest loser of the favourites in 10th, ceding 39 seconds.
More to come…
