Mathieu van der Poel pipped Tadej Pogacar to victory on stage two of the Tour de France to take the yellow jersey from his team-mate Jasper Philipsen.
Van der Poel edged an uphill sprint from overall favourites Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard before collapsing to the ground in Boulogne-sur-Mer, the end point of the hard-fought 209-kilometre stage from Lauwin-Planque, the longest of this year’s Tour.
It was the Belgian’s second career Tour stage win, and the second to bring him yellow after his win on the Mur-de-Bretagne in 2021, when he held it for six days.
Van der Poel delivered on his status as favourite for a classics-style stage that came down to the final three climbs of a rolling day across northern France, with a series of attacks splitting the peloton into pieces and setting up a ferocious battle up the short, steep rise to the line.
Former world champion Julian Alaphilippe was the first to launch a major dig but Van der Poel and Pogacar were quickly on to his wheel, waiting for the finish line to come into view with a little over 100 metres to go.
When Van der Poel opened the taps Pogacar responded but the current world champion could not come around the man who wore the rainbows before him.
“It was super difficult, the final, harder than I thought,” Van der Poel said.
“I was really motivated because it’s been four years since I won my first stage on the Tour de France so it was about time I won a second one. Of course people put me as a favourite but if you see the riders that were in front on the climbs, I think I did a really good job to be there…
“It’s a dream for a team, these first two days, and everything that comes now is just a bonus.”
Van der Poel leads by four seconds from Pogacar, with Vingegaard a further two seconds back after bonus seconds were applied. Pogacar took the king of the mountains jersey, almost accidentally, as he led the group over the penultimate climb of the Cote de Saint-Etienne-au-Mont.
Philipsen had been distanced on the Cote d’Outreau, the last categorised climb of the day, coming home 31 seconds down to hand the jersey to his Alpecin-Deceuninck team-mate.
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The start of the stage was held up by 15 minutes as teams were delayed getting to Lauwin-Planque in some miserable weather, but the sun eventually came out as the race heated up.
Vingegaard, so active in Saturday’s crosswinds, again looked spritely with the two-time Tour winner the first to push on as they came over the Cote d’Outreau to ensure it would be a selective finish.
This time Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic stuck with the front group, but the Ineos Grenadiers’ Carlos Rodriguez lost 31 seconds.
Stage three is a 178.3km route over flat terrain from Valenciennes to Dunkirk on Monday.
