Groenewegen sprints to Tour stage win as Brailsford cools Bernal hype

While the dust settled on the gravel climb to La Planche des Belles Filles, the Tour’s longest stage, a 230km haul from Belfort to Chalon-sur-Saône, was also its most soporific to date, illuminated briefly by a first sprint victory in this year’s race for Dylan Groenewegen of the Netherlands. As Groenewegen’s Jumbo-Visma team celebrated their third stage win in the 2019 Tour, there was more speculation over the hierarchy at Team Ineos after Geraint Thomas’s resurgence in the Vosges mountains and Dave Brailsford’s suggestion that those tipping the Welshman’s teammate, Egan Bernal, for final victory in Paris, were “getting carried away”. Then he can come back and say: ‘OK, I know all about this race.’” Whether that may be an attempt to deflect unwanted attention away from the 22-year-old to the more experienced Thomas is unclear, but Brailsford added that he was not surprised by the defending champion’s form in the Tour’s first real mountain stage. I think he’d have preferred a bit more tempo up that last climb.” With the French rider Thibaut Pinot emerging as one of his most dangerous rivals after Thursday’s steep finish to La Planche des Belles Filles, while others such as Vincenzo Nibali and Romain Bardet fell away, Thomas admitted he now had a clearer idea of which riders posed the greatest threat to his title defence. “Obviously Pinot was strong and Julian Alaphilippe is riding incredibly well, but I think everyone else is still there or thereabouts. It was only stage six, but we’re off to a good start.” “We’re pretty happy really,” Brailsford said of his team’s performance to date. “When we sat down before the race and thought about what we hoped to achieve, I think we’re pretty much on track really. Maybe actually a little better than we expected at this stage.” If the signs were encouraging for defending champion Thomas after the finish to La Planche des Belles Filles, there were others who were left scratching their heads. The most deflated was Bardet, widely touted as a potential winner of this year’s Tour, until the group of favourites turned onto the gravel road leading to the brutal finish and his illusions were quickly shattered. “Ashamed to have been not at my top level and to have just been a spectator for this first rendezvous.” “I was well below my expectations, and I have to accept responsibility,” Bardet said.