Fabio Jakobsen winning stage 2. Photo: A.S.O./Pauline Ballet
[button]Tour de France: Unchained - Pre-Show Guide[/button]
We’re introduced to the first protagonist of this year's Tour de France: Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl, a.k.a. “The Wolfpack.” This Belgian team is made up of stage hunters. The Tour de France consists of 21 stages held over 21 days (with two rest days sprinkled in). The overall winner is the “Maillot Jaune” (a.k.a. Yellow Jersey) wearer — the rider with the fastest overall time after all 21 stages. But each stage has its own winner — the rider that crosses the finish line first.
Quick-Step’s goal isn’t to win the overall, but individual stages. Winning a stage in the Tour is a big deal. Only the best riders in the world go to the Tour, and beating them all during a stage can define your career.
Over the years, Quick-Step has amassed a massive 47 stage wins at the Tour and they’re considered one of the top teams. But they’ve been hit by a patch of bad luck with injuries and illness affecting many of its riders.
Quick-Step‘s star rider, Julian Alaphilippe, is the current World Champion (in 2022) but he’s had a spring marred with injury after two bad crashes. Quick-Step‘s top sprinter, Fabio Jakobsen, nearly died in a horrific finish line crash at the Tour of Poland two years prior. He says he’s had to come back from “almost zero, maybe even below that.”
Teams at the Tour de France can only bring 8 riders, and Quick-Step’s team selection is curiously framed as if the final spot comes down to a choice between Alaphilippe vs. Jakobsen. The two riders usually wouldn’t be vying for the same spot on the team since they specialize at winning different types of stages — Alaphilippe is an all-rounder who excels on tough and climb-heavy courses while Jakobsen is a pure sprinter best suited to flat and fast stages. But hey, it adds to the drama. Ultimately, Jakobsen is selected for Quick-Step’s Tour roster while Alaphilippe is left at home.
Then, we meet our second protagonist: EF Education-EasyPost. This American team wears pink and is made up of fun-loving guys who don’t take life too seriously. But don’t let their looks fool you. Manager Jonathan Vaughters wants you to know that it’s all a facade. He and these dudes are all stone-cold killers who’ll fight tooth and nail to win.
But as it turns out, they haven’t won much recently. In fact, they’re near the bottom of the barrel this year, and desperate for points. This leads to a scene that only reality TV can deliver.
A group of what I assume is EF’s management gathers in a conference room before the Tour. Conveniently, the cameras are rolling, and they have a very pointed discussion of how to “pull [their] season out of the shitter” lest they all get fired for underperforming. Wow! So glad they decided to have this very important meeting while the film crew was there. (In case you think I’m making fun of this, I absolutely love it.)
Of course, bringing Vaughters on screen is the perfect time to get the doping discussion and he-who-shall-not-be-named (Lance Armstong) out of the way. Vaughters is a reformed doper who once rode for Armstrong on the Tour-dominating US Postal team. Now that he’s in charge, he’s enforced stringent anti-doping measures within his own team. This was big news back in the mid-2000s. He feels these practices have spread and helped keep the sport cleaner.
Then we move on to “Project Stefan.” Stefan Bissegger is on EF’s Tour roster and is a time-trial specialist. His sole mission this year is to win the Stage 1 time trial. They’ve been preparing diligently over the last 18 months, optimizing Sefan’s position, and training him so they can beat the favorites: time-trial world champion Filippo Ganna and the phenomenal Wout van Aert.
What’s interesting here is that Bissegger is framed as the underdog, for no reason other than the fact that he costs less than Ganna or van Aert. EF, of course, doesn’t have the budget of big teams like Ineos or Jumbo-Visma. Bissegger is the “budget” choice. Yes, it’s true. But it’s fun to hear his manager say it.
Vaughters seems to gain confidence when Stage 1 is affected by rain. Bissegger is apparently a very good technical rider, and the rain should give him an advantage. But we all know this is foreshadowing.
Bissegger pushes so hard during his time trial. But he goes over the edge and crashes in a wet corner. He stays calm and remounts but crashes again later. He finishes outside of the top 10. His dream is ruined. The team is sad, oh so sad.
Yves Lampaert. Photo: A.S.O./Pauline Ballet
Fortunately, a dream comes true for someone else. Yves Lampaert takes a surprise win for Quick-Step. It’s likely the biggest win of his career, especially since winning the first stage means he gets to wear the leader’s Yellow Jersey for the next.
It’s an amazing prize for Lampaert, who is a lead-out man that normally sacrifices his own results to help Fabio Jakobsen. Lampaert gets a few touching moments to enjoy his victory. But the Tour is only just beginning. The next stage is a sprint stage and Lampaert will need to sacrifice his jersey to protect Jaboksen and launch him at the finish.
Stage 2 is a battle between Jakobsen and Jumbo-Visma’s Wout van Aert. If you don’t know, van Aert is a phenom capable of winning every type of stage: sprint, mountain, and time-trial. He’s already won multiple stages in the last two Tours, and everyone expects him to continue dominating.
This is Jakobsen’s first Tour and he’s returning from a near-death crash. Can he take the pressure and nab his first win? As far as I’m concerned, in 2022 Jakobsen was clearly the fastest sprinter at the Tour. They even show him smoking van Aert at Paris-Nice, but again, framing it this way just adds to the drama!
We learn a bit about the course, and gasp… “There’s a bridge.” Epic b-roll of the bridge is accompanied by ominous bass tones, so we know this bridge is bad news. Apparently, because it provides no shelter from the wind, there’ll be “crashes, lots of crashes.”
The bridge. Photo: A.S.O./Pauline Ballet
When the riders start riding across the bridge, a few do end up hitting the deck hard. Among them is Yves Lampaert, the Yellow Jersey. This is bad because Lampaert is supposed to be leading Jakobsen out for the sprint. Without him, Jakobsen is vulnerable. And now that Lampaert has crashed and been left behind, he’s dead.
Not really, but after the crash we get my favorite quote of the episode: “The peloton keeps moving. It never stops. If you’re in the peloton, you’re alive. If you’re not in the peloton, you’re facing death.” So dramatic.
We watch Lampaert get back on his bike and desperately chase back onto the peloton. This is where Tour de France: Unchained really shines. When I watched all of this unfold in real-time last year, I felt no urgency. But with editing and music, it just hits different. Will Lampaert get back on? After a few tense moments, he does, and phew, it feels good.
Then we enter the final sprint. The intensity ramps as riders race bar-to-bar through the narrow roads. The music gets fast. Watching Quick-Step CEO Patrick Lefevre clenching his hands just adds even more tension. Then there’s another crash. After a dragged-out pause, we cut back to the front of the peloton and see that the sprinters are okay. The race is still on.
Approaching the finish, Lampaert launches Jakobsen early. It doesn’t matter. The man is a hurricane. He uses his pure power to sprint to the right into open air. At the line, he beats van Aert with a well-timed bike throw. Sweet victory. After beating death, Jakobson has now beaten one of the best riders in the world at the Tour de France. It’s a form of redemption.
Quick-Step’s wins were perhaps the ideal story to open Tour de France: Unchained. A once powerful team is down on its luck, but it beats a juggernaut and regains its mojo. And a Tour rookie nabs the win that he probably deserved after escaping death.
I loved it.
But Wout van Aert clearly didn’t. No, he’s pissed. He’s a man who wants to win everything. His team wants to win everything. At the end, we get our first good glimpse at the powerhouse we’ll meet in the next episode: Jumbo-Visma.
