Despite suffering a crash on stage 11, Tadej Pogačar tore up the script to win the first mountain stage of the Tour de France with a brutal attack on the Hautacam – showing no mercy to Jonas Vingegaard. Nobody could follow. For the first mountain stage of this year’s Tour, Pogačar used his Colnago Y1Rs aero bike as opposed to his 400g lighter V5Rs, which proved the correct choice in the end given the 44km/h average speed and relatively flat 122km lead-up to the Col du Soulor.
The Colnago Y1Rs is one of the most outlandish bikes in the pro peloton, with only the new Factor prototype and Cervelo S5 running it close in terms of visual clout. Its design, however, eschews traditional tube shaping with a form-follows-function approach – something Colnago claimed at the time of launch was the fastest bike among its peers.
