Jonas Vingegaard won Tour de France stage 2 in Barcelona and took the first yellow jersey. Visma-Lease a Bike beat Filippo Ganna-led Netcompany Ineos by seven seconds after a 19.6km team time trial to Montjuïc and the Olympic Stadium.
Barcelona TTT on Montjuïc
The opening stage used a first-past-the-post team time trial, with each rider’s time taken individually at the finish line. The Tour de France had not started with that format since 1971, and the new setup immediately changed the opening GC picture.
Vingegaard shed Matteo Jorgenson and Davide Piganzoli on the final climb to the Olympic Stadium, then finished with the stage win and the race lead. UAE Team Emirates finished third, 12 seconds behind Visma, so the gap at the top was built in seconds rather than minutes.
UAE, Ayuso and Evenepoel
Tadej Pogačar tried to close the deficit for UAE Team Emirates, but Isaac Del Toro was dropped in the final 500m. Juan Ayuso was fourth in the first top 10 of the 2026 Tour, Remco Evenepoel was fifth, Isaac Del Toro was sixth, Lipowitz was eighth and Seixas was tenth.
The new format was meant to create tactical variety, but the race still tilted toward teams using their time trial specialists to carry their GC contenders to the finish climb. That left the real separator at the end of the stage: who could still lift the pace when the road turned up at Montjuïc.
Pidcock at the finish
Pinarello Q36.5 finished 12th, 57 seconds down on Visma, with Tom Pidcock kept at the back on the opening flat section before being set up for the uphill finale. Kurt Bogaerts said, “It was a hard final”, and added, “You want to keep Tom’s best skills intact.”
He also said, “I think he’s very explosive and powerful on that kind of finish, and then our strategy was to save as much energy as possible.” Bogaerts added that the discipline is hard to enjoy because “when you sit on the back like Tom, a lot of things go through your head that you want to cooperate and you want to step in.”
For Pidcock, the first stage delivered a clear blueprint: sit tight early, wait for the climb, and rely on the uphill finish to turn a team effort into an individual result. How much this version of the team time trial changes the rest of The Tour will be decided as the GC battle keeps moving after Barcelona.
