Netcompany-Ineos benefited most from an aggressive stage 1 finale at the race formerly known as the Critérium du Dauphiné, the foremost Tour de France warm-up event.
Cor Vos
Alex Baudin won stage 1 of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, formerly the Critérium du Dauphiné, to take the first yellow jersey of the French summer. EF Education-EasyPost’s young Frenchman installed himself in the breakaway of the day and kept his powder dry until the Cat.1 Côte de Rousset, where he attacked to go solo in the first kilometre of the climb, 28.5 km from the finish in Saint-Ismier.
By the summit, he’d almost doubled his advantage over the peloton, and a speedy descent saw it stretch even further. Baudin kept the pressure on all the way to the line, where he took by far the biggest win of his career, and his first in almost two years. He also steps into the lead in all four classifications.
In the peloton, it was a carefully controlled day, right up until it wasn’t. Stalemate reigned until the reduced bunch reached the bottom of the descent, and attacks erupted out of the lull with 7 km to go. The first few accelerations yielded little, but then Kévin Vauquelin flew out of the left flank of the peloton and initiated a split. His teammate and GC co-leader Oscar Onley was quick to respond, but they were the only overall contenders to make the 10-rider move. And though the likes of Paul Seixas, Isaac Del Toro, Matteo Jorgenson and Juan Ayuso missed out, the last remaining teammates of Seixas (Léo Bisiaux), Del Toro (Kevin Vermaeke) and Jorgenson (Ben Tulett and Bruno Armirail) did, which made any attempt to neutralise the threat all the harder.
The chase group sprinted home 32 seconds after Baudin, and the rest of the GC favourites managed to limit their losses to just 12 seconds having seen their disadvantage stretch to half a minute at its threatening maximum.
[race_result id=15 stage_id=90119 count=5 gc=0 year=2026]
[race_result id=15 stage_id=90119 count=5 gc=5 year=2026]
Did we do a good job with this story?