Gino Bartali is still the last Italian to wear the yellow jersey on the first day of the Tour. It happened in the 1948 edition. Since then, no one else, a curious record that Elia Viviani dreamed of achieving this year but the outcome of the first stage of the Grande Boucle n.106 was more than disappointing for the Italian sprinter of the Deceuninck-Quick Step who had to settle for ninth place in the Brussels sprint. A sprint complicated by a crash in the last km which knocked out the Dutchman Dylan Groenewegen, one of the favorites to win, and also sent Geraint Thomas flying against the barriers (fortunately without major consequences). The winner was the twenty-six-year-old Belgian Mike Teunissen of Jumbo-Visma, who in his duties had the specific tasks of sprinting his captain Groenewegen and who suddenly found himself playing a leading role fighting against Peter Sagan and burning him on the finish line for a few centimetres. Among the many beaten VIPs also Caleb Ewan finished third.
A fall 18 km from the finish risked closing Jacob Fuglsang's Tour at his debut, which in the bookmakers' bets is the third favorite for the final victory, behind the two super popular Thomas and Egan Bernal. The Dane, with the strength and determination that characterizes him, got back on the saddle staging a ferocious chase to reconnect the group with all the best inside. A successful but expensive action, with a sore knee, which could affect his team time trial today, again in the Belgian location of a festive Brussels that the Tour has chosen as the starting theater for this edition to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first victory in yellow for Eddy Merckx, an authentic Martian who fell to Earth in that distant July of 1969 as man set foot on the Moon for the first time.
