Kristoff survives Tour chaos to win first stage
CRASHES and chaos reigned on the opening stage of the 2020 Tour de France as numerous riders came to grief on the Cote d’Azur’s steep hills and city streets.
But Alexander Kristoff, of Norway, sprinted through the bikes and bodies to snatch the race leader’s yellow jersey.
‘You can’t dream of a better start,’ said Kristoff. ‘I felt really strong in the final kilometres and, going to the line. I saw I was going to win. It was an amazing feeling. I’m really proud of what I was able to do.’
On a dramatic stage, many of the Tour’s big names struggled to recover from the thrills and spills and were forced to chase back to the peloton without team-mates.
At one point, midway through the stage, there were so many crashes, that the riders chose to stage a go-slow to allow stragglers to regain lost ground.
It was left to Tony Martin, a Jumbo-Visma team-mate of prerace favourite Primoz Roglic, to calm things down but the crashes continued, even into the finishing straight on Nice seafront.
Among those to hit the tarmac this time was hapless French favourite Thibaut Pinot, but the highly-rated climber was able to remount and cross the line.
Mads Pedersen, the world champion, who was beaten into second place by Kristoff, said: ‘The peloton stood together as a unit today and took it easy on the downhill. If you do the downhill, you’ll see how much oil there was on the roads. So it was nice to see the peloton stand together.’
But it was a rude awakening for the Ineos Grenadiers team of defending champion Egan Bernal, with key support riders Pavel Sivakov and Andrey Amador among the team’s fallers.
Sivakov seemed to be the most injured after falling three times, while Bernal is still nursing a back injury that flared up earlier this month.
‘The big problem was that it hasn’t rained here for so two or three months and then you have one day when it rains, so it’s literally like ice,’ said Bernal’s team captain Luke Rowe.
‘While you want to race and put on the best show, at the same time, you could see how many crashes there were and that was with not very high speeds.’
Meanwhile, Lizzie Deignan won the seventh edition of La Course, pipping last year’s winner Marianne Vos in a thrilling finish to the 96km women’s race in Nice.
The Briton, 31, who rides for Trek-Segafredo, said: ‘I was just relieved that I won it. What a performance by Trek-Segafredo today. Every single rider played their part. It’s phenomenal!
‘To be part of Trek-Segafredo is the best feeling and this is a team victory. My husband and daughter were watching on TV and I can’t wait to speak to them.’