Van der Poel lights up brutal first week

Tadej Pogačar is in control, but the fired-up Dutchman has played a starring role

- Chris Marshall-Bell

Mathieu van der Poel was the star of the show in a brutal first week of the Tour de France, spending four days in yellow and almost pulling off a heroic breakaway victory right before the Tour headed into the mountains.

The Dutchman, 30, found himself in the race lead after winning in Boulogne-sur-Mer on stage two, and he kept hold of the maillot jaune until the stage five time trial, when defending champion Tadej Pogačar overtook him.

He said the night before the TT that, “I don’t know how I am going to gain time on Tadej again with the stages that are coming up,” but on stage six Van der Poel did indeed seize yellow once more - but only just.

After he infiltrated an eight-man breakaway on an undulating parcours through Normandy, Van der Poel tired and wasn’t able to compete for stage honours - EF Education-EasyPost’s Ben Healy triumphed with a brilliant and typical solo move - but he did jump back to the top of the general classification ahead of Pogačar by one second.

That effort negatively affected his chances the following day on the Mûr de Bretagne - a climb where he memorably won and took the yellow jersey for the first ever time in 2021 - yet on stage nine he was back animating the race.

He broke away with his Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Jonas Rickaert for the entire stage, and almost foiled the sprinters in Châteauroux, being caught with just over 700m left of the day’s racing.

It capped off a memorable week for Van der Poel, and a return to delivering in the world’s biggest road race, after previously commenting in the winter that he hadn't “Let’s go!” Ben Healy screamed from the podium as he was presented with the yellow jersey after stage 10. Not satisfied with his stage six win, the Irishman once again escaped on stage 10 to seize the yellow jersey ahead of the first rest day.