Tour de France 2026: Jonas Vingegaard in yellow after Barcelona team time trial

Jonas Vingegaard stunned Tadej Pogacar, the defending champion, by taking the first yellow jersey of the 2026 Tour de France after his Visma-Lease a Bike team won the opening stage of this year’s race, a 19.6km team time trial in Barcelona.

Two years after a life-threatening crash, Vingegaard, who won this year’s Giro d’Italia, looks back to his best. “It feels amazing to have the yellow jersey again,” said the Dane, the Tour champion in 2022 and 2023. “It’s been three years and it’s one of the most beautiful jerseys in cycling. It’s the perfect start for our race.”

Asked if this yellow jersey was the most treasured of his career, he replied: “I would say so. Being back in yellow is important. I will enjoy every moment that I’m wearing it.”

Vingegaard crashed at speed while racing in the Basque country in April 2024 and was taken to intensive care with broken ribs, sternum and collarbone, and a punctured lung. “It’s been a few hard years for me for obvious reasons,” he said. “I’ve been struggling at times, but now I feel like I can close this chapter. Lying on the ground thinking that I was going to die will always be part of my book. I didn’t think about cycling, I just thought about trying to survive.”

The Danish rider threw down the gauntlet to his longstanding rival Pogacar, beating the Slovenian by 12 seconds at the uphill finish in Montjuïc. But the stage was also a near miss for Filippo Ganna, of Netcompany Ineos, who came within eight seconds of taking the first yellow jersey for the Dave Brailsford-managed team since Egan Bernal won the Tour in 2019.

As a barometer of the form of the Tour’s favourites, all were present and correct, with the French hope Paul Seixas and a leaned-down Remco Evenepoel both looking a force to contend with.

The mainly flat route suited the powerhouse time trialling characteristics of Ganna and the newly rebranded Ineos team. Under the watchful eye of Netcompany’s CEO, André Rogaczewski, the eight-man team were fastest through all the checkpoints and appeared set for the best time, until their nominated leader, Kevin Vauquelin, had a puncture on the approach to Montjuïc, losing a minute by the finish.

With the Frenchman distanced, leadership passed to the former world time trial champion Ganna, who powered up the final 800m to set the fastest time by more than half a minute.

That lead remained intact until Vingegaard came into view, pummeling the pedals in the heat of the late afternoon, to record his best time trial performance since 2023, when he beat Pogacar by almost seven and half minutes.

While the old rivals seem destined to lock horns in the days to come, it was a solid, if unspectacular start by the French favourite Seixas, who set the second fastest time, until he was distanced by 39 seconds from the race lead by Vingegaard.

“We limited the damage today and I felt good,” the 19-year-old said. “We expected to see gaps like that. We did the best we could.”

Pogacar’s preparations had already suffered one setback when he and his team arrived at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya motor racing track, north of the city, to hone their time-trialling strategy but, having failed to book a session in advance, were denied access. Last-minute attempts to persuade the Total Energies and Decathlon teams to share their 90-minute allocations failed, leaving the four-time winner’s team lacking in vital preparation.

High temperatures and gusting winds are causing a threat to stage three of the race, with the Tour organisation now monitoring wildfires in northern Catalunya and also on the border with France. More than two thousand firefighters are battling fires along France’s Mediterranean coast and Perpignan airport has also been closed. Monday’s third stage heads north into France’s Pyrénées-Orientales département and a finish in Les Angles.