Stage 1

The road

At the start

Florence to Rimini, and no sprint

The Tour starts in Italy for the first time, and it starts hard: 206 kilometres across the Apennines with seven classified climbs, three inside the last fifty, and thirty degrees over the top. Tadej Pogačar arrives from a Giro he never lost control of. Jonas Vingegaard pins on a number for the first time since the crash at Itzulia in April. Wout van Aert says he has never begun a Tour in such poor form.

How it was won

1. 1106 km to go

   A stacked break goes clear

   In brutal Tuscan heat a strong nine-man move forms over the day's early climbs, with Mark Cavendish already in trouble, vomiting on the bike and shipping huge time.

2. 250 km to go

   Bardet rolls the dice

   Impatient with the tempo, Romain Bardet attacks the peloton 50km from home in what he has said will be his final Tour and bridges up to teammate Frank van den Broek.

3. 316 km to go

   The DSM duo hold their nerve

   Over the final Côte de San Marino the two Dutch-registered riders ride in perfect harmony, cresting with a lead the flagging chasers behind can't quite believe they'll fail to close.

4. 46 km to go

   The peloton runs out of road

   Lidl-Trek, EF and Visma hammer the seafront run into Rimini but, after a savage day in the heat, they run dry — and in the last corners Bardet and Van den Broek vanish for good.

5. 5At the line

   Bardet steals yellow

   Bardet takes over from an exhausted Van den Broek for the final pull and wins by a handful of metres, the first Frenchman in the maillot jaune since Alaphilippe — an unforgettable career day.

The result