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He's not in yellow but he's been the biggest surprise of the Tour so far. Can he hold on to the podium until Paris? Pictured: Geraint Thomas in the 2018 Tour de France. Konstantin Kleine, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

2022 Tour de France – Week 2 Grades

Posted on July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 by tpl

Grade A – Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers)

The British rider is 3rd after 2 weeks. I don’t think anybody predicted that. After Ineos’ failure to capture the Giro d’Italia with their most capable rider in 2022, Richard Carapaz, one or two stages and maybe a top-5 was the most I personally saw them achieve at the Tour. Instead they’re fighting for the podium with Thomas and Adam Yates and already won a stage through Thomas Pidcock who is also 9th overall. They’re leading the teams’ classification, 35 minutes in front of Jumbo Visma. After the withdrawals of Primoz Roglic and Steven Kruijswijk, the teams’ classification is already as good as won for the British team.

At the peak of Ineos’ performance so far in the Tour though, is Geraint Thomas. The 2018 yellow jersey winner is experiencing a career resurgence at 36 years old. It’s arguable whether he’ll be able to secure his 3rd place by the end of the Tour but 2 weeks in he’s in great position. In fact, his teammate Adam Yates is probably his biggest competition. Romain Bardet is always a wildcard but as long as Thomas doesn’t flat-out break one day, he’s far better than any of his competition for the podium on stage 20’s 40km time trial.

Grade B – Nairo Quintana (Arkea Samsic)

This feels like a throwback to 2019 when both Thomas and Quintana were winning stages and fighting for the podium of Grand Tours (GTs).

The Colombian is currently in 6th place, just 1m32s from the podium. The final time trial will likely prevent him from fighting for that goal but to be fair, other than Adam Yates, the other 6 riders in the mix for the podium haven’t displayed much recent consistency in GTs.

Nairo Quintana hasn’t returned to form ever since signing for Arkea, but the French team is surely delighted with his performance in this year’s Tour. With a top-10 place nearly guaranteed, his attention must turn to the stages of tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday that will dictate the order of the top-10 of the 2022 Tour de France. Top-10? All but done. Top-5? Within his reach. Podium? Tough, but he’s in the mix. Much like Thomas, this is a position he hasn’t been in since 2019.

Grade C – Fabio Jakobsen (Quick Step Alphavinyl)

As hyped as the Dutch sprinter was coming into the Tour, he’s produced remarkably little. He was, after all, Lefevre’s pet project to replace Mark Cavendish at the Tour. The Manxman wasn’t able to come to the Tour to attempt to break the stage win record because the team had a better sprinter in its ranks. A stage win, a 5th and a 9th place is too little to justify denying Cav (and the sponsors themselves) his chance at the record.

As for Jakobsen, in a vacuum, a stage win at the Tour for a sprinter can never be considered a negative result. He was never head and shoulders above everybody else and was a long shot for the green jersey. A stage win for a rider of his caliber is ok, not great.

Grade D – Peter Sagan (TotalEnergies)

TotalEnergies continues their tradition of being hopeless at the Tour. After Thomas Voeckler and Pierre Rolland left the former Europcar structure, outside of some fluky performances, the team never produced anything of substance at the French GT. 2022 is no different.

After many years of not being relevant, the team needed a star. There were rumblings about Total not being invited to the Tour. Nonsense, of course, but that’s how bad things had gotten. Peter Sagan was leaving Bora at the end of the previous season which created an amazing opportunity: a big name for a team in desperate need of relevancy.

Interestingly (against all odds), the French team had been performing really well in World Tour level races in 2022 until the Tour, largely without their big name signing. In this Tour, though, nobody escaped the miserable results of the past decade. The best the former world champion has done is four top-10 stage finishes while never really looking at the level of the top sprinters of the peloton. Boason Hagen in stage 5 (3rd place) was the closest the team came to winning a stage. That’s it. Five top-10 stage finishes for a team like Total. They’re not the biggest team but that’s remarkably little for their budget and a three-time former world champion.  

Grade E – Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates)

I still think he’s the best in the world. And it’s not particularly close, in my opinion. Look at stages 6 and 7 if you don’t believe me. He wins what he wants.

He had a bad day at the Col du Granon. It happens. But it does mean that his chances to win the yellow jersey for the third time in a row took a major hit. Jonas Vingegaard is not just any rider. He’s not Quintana or Bardet in the time trial. He’s not going to lose 5 minutes to Pogacar on stage 20. In fact, Pogacar might consider himself lucky to take 30-45 off of the Dane in the time trial. That leaves more than 1m30s that the Slovenian needs to take from Vingegaard on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Jumbo Visma took a huge hit going into the second rest day with the withdrawals of Roglic and Kruijswijk. UAE had also taken a hit when George Bennett abandoned the race.

I still back Pogacar to win the race, especially after Vingegaard’s supporting group got weakened. However, being nearly 2m30s down on the yellow jersey after 2 weeks of racing is surely not something that was in Pogacar’s plans.

Grade F – Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma)

Much like last year, a crash ruined his yellow jersey dreams. After crashing he valiantly fought to minimize his losses on stage 5, but losing 2 minutes to Vingegaard proved too much even for Roglic to overcome. The Dane came into the Tour with ambitions of his own, supported by his 2nd place finish last year. The smallest of misfortunes would swing the pendulum inside the team and that’s exactly what happened. I believe Jumbo-Visma would have liked nothing more than to take Roglic to the highest step of the podium in Paris. Failing that, the highest step of the podium is still their goal, just with another rider.

It seems overly harsh to place Roglic as the biggest loser of the Tour so far, given that it was an accident that took him out of contention. Still, as the clock ticks ever closer to the dawn of his career, his chances to win the Tour get smaller and smaller. If Vingegaard takes home the yellow jersey this year and Roglic stays in Jumbo for 2023, there is no way he’ll be the team leader in the Tour. If he wants to leave and the team allows him to go elsewhere despite being under contract, history tells us that he has a narrow window to win the Tour (he turns 33 in October).

Personally, I would love to see him win a Tour, especially after 2020. Realistically, though, the ascension of Vingegaard (25 years old) within his own team might put the final nail on the coffin of his aspirations for the French GT.

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