Stage 2: Brussels
Date: July 7, 2019
Distance: 27km
Stage type: Team Time Trial
The Tour's racing director Thierry Gouvenou has suggested that if the conditions are right this 27-kilometre team time trial course could produce a new record speed for a stage of this kind, improving on the 57.841km/h average set by Orica-GreenEdge when they won over 25km in Nice during the 2013 event. Featuring plenty of long straights, just a handful of tight turns where the eight-rider teams will have to ease off on the gas for a few moments, and barely any climbing of note, it promises to be as tightly contested as last year's contest in Cholet, where five teams finished within 11 seconds of each other at the top of the leaderboard, BMC taking the spoils with a margin of four seconds over Sky and seven over QuickStep.
Starting outside the magnificent Palais Royal, the course heads east towards Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, then tracks into the southern suburbs of the city, before turning north to bisect the Belgian capital in order to reach the finish adjacent to the Atomium. A yellow jersey adorned with an image of a young Eddy Merckx will be presented here to what is likely to be a new wearer, perhaps from one of the teams that has this jersey as its ultimate target when the race reaches Paris in three weeks’ time.
Ineos, Sunweb, Mitchelton-Scott and Jumbo-Visma should all be in the frame, but racing on home terrain with the crowd and great form to motivate them, Deceuninck could be the outfit to beat. Their 2018 King of the Mountains winner Julian Alaphilippe has acknowledged that the prospect of him being in yellow at this early point in the Tour has crossed his mind, and those teams with longer-term objectives won’t be too disappointed if the Frenchman or one of his teammates carries the pressure of the yellow jersey for a few days.
-
Newly crowned world champion Lucinda Brand claims 20th cyclo-cross victory and set for road season debut at Strade Bianche
Dutch rider planning to race X2O Badkamers Trofee Brussels Universities Cyclocross on Sunday -
Silke Smulders fractured lumbar vertebrae in stage 2 crash at Setmana Valenciana
Second setback for the Dutch rider in 2026 after missing Tour Down Under -
'We could not stay on the bikes' - with riders blown off course, a 15-minute 'race' and a full winners' final ceremony, here's how Vuelta a Murcia's windblasted stage-that-wasn't veered into something far odder
Marc Soler crowned overall winner of radically shortened Spanish stage race -
Derek Gee-West returns to racing for the first time since June at UAE Tour, in solid shape at new team Lidl-Trek 'considering where I was physically and mentally in November'
Canadian national champion says he will have new jersey for Monday's stage after substituting ill teammate Gilulio Ciccone
