Tim Wellens surprises Victor Campenaerts to win his first Tour stage

Times

18 hours ago

The Tour de France rolled into Carcassonne for the 13th time on Sunday. Unlucky 13 for Visma-Lease a Bike. They came into the race believing they could win it, convinced theirs would be the strongest team. Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife, Arsène Wenger once said. Visma got two of their strongest into the 24-rider breakaway that had the 15th leg of the Tour to themselves. Their great rivals UAE Emirates XRG had one.
There was one outcome Visma did not want. Which was the one they got. Tadej Pogacar's friend and team-mate Tim Wellens broke clear of his fellow escapees 42km from the finish and soon disappeared from view. They would not see him again until after the race. Visma's Victor Campenaerts was second and their other contender Wout van Aert was fourth.
Such is the determination to protect Pogacar, UAE's equipiers do not often leave him. On this occasion, Wellens embodied the Oscar Wilde principle that man can resist anything except temptation. There were good reasons why Wellens went for it. Having had trouble with his bike the day before, he was left behind on the Col du Tourmalet and could not contribute to the team effort.
That left him feeling unusually fresh as the race left Muret for their journey to Carcassonne. One hundred kilometres from the finish, the attacks were so numerous that soon they were uncontrollable. Wellens went with the flow. Once part of the escape, he was able to play the Yellow Jersey card: with my boss leading the race, how can I be expected to contribute to the pacesetting?
Campenaerts noticed Wellens in their group and sighed. 'We said today we wanted to go for the stage. It was a good situation with Wout and me in the breakaway, but Wellens… We have a good relationship outside of cycling, but in the races, he's the guy that you don't want to have in the breakaway.'
Wellens then played the rider Campenaerts believes him to be. 'He's smart, he's sneaky,' Campenaerts said. 'He knows how to play it. He wasn't allowed to do any pulls. He was sitting on, but he was very strong. He didn't miss any decisive moments, and he did a perfect move on the highest point of the course.
'Of course, second is not what we race for, so it's a bit disappointing, but it is what it is. Wellens was really strong, and he didn't stroll this victory.'
After the stage, the stage winner and the Yellow Jersey are obliged to do video conferences with journalists. As Wellens and Pogacar are team-mates, they opted for a duet. The race leader was content to let his team-mate bask in the limelight. Pogacar was asked why he chased down Matteo Jorgenson's attack at the time the breakaway was forming.
He explained that when word came through that Jonas Vingegaard had been held up by a crash, he tried to get everyone to slow down so his No1 rival and others could safely return to the peloton. 'But the attacks to join the breakaway continued. Visma already had two riders in the break and when Matteo went, I thought you don't need a third rider in the group, so I went after him.'
Pogacar's feeling was that Visma's riders should not have been attacking when their team leader was trying to rejoin the peloton. Visma's strategy though has changed. They still say their No1 priority is Vingegaard's pursuit of the Yellow but that has evolved as Pogacar's lead has stretched to more than four minutes. Now they want to play on two fronts, with stage wins a new priority.
Do not, though, feel sorry for Campenaerts and Van Aert meeting Wellens on the wrong day. What sympathy you have got, save it for Julian Alaphilippe, who punched the air after winning the sprint for third place into Carcassonne, believing that he was sprinting for first. 'He had a crash at the beginning of the race,' Raphael Meyer, the Tudor sports director, said. 'He had pain and a dislocated shoulder. He was seen by the doctor and he still has some pain. He's going for x-rays.'
Alaphilippe pressed his right shoulder back into its socket and carried on. In the crash, he also damaged his earpiece and had no contact with the team car for the rest of the stage. Joining the lead group after Wellens and Campenaerts had gone clear, he mistakenly thought he was in a group sprinting for victory.
All the favourites were in a group 6mins 7secs down on Wellens which was a good place for Oscar Onley to be. He has now got the second rest day to consider the final push to Paris. He sits in fourth place overall, in position to emulate Robert Millar's fourth place in the 1984 Tour. For a 22-year-old in his second tour, Onley has been a revelation in the race so far. So too have been the size of the crowds. The Tour organiser Christian Prudhomme said the crowds at Lille for the opening weekend were the greatest since Yorkshire in 2014, which were the greatest of all.
An hour before the finish at Carcassonne I met two Welshmen, Glenn Seaborne and his son Louis. What tempted them to leave Ebbw Vale for the southwest of France? 'Five years ago,' Glenn said, 'I was talking with Louis, who was 16 at the time, and he said he'd been watching the Tour de France and would love to spend a few days at the race. I said, 'We'll do it.''
Glenn had played rugby for 30 years, a semi-professional as an adult. Louis is a football goalkeeper, but once the kid mentioned the Tour, Dad decided it really would happen. After Glenn finished rugby, he became a bike rider. A year after that first conversation, he bought an old Volkswagen and converted it into a camper van. It was all part of a plan. Last year, they made their first trip to the Tour. Four stages. They loved every minute.
This year, they've come for 16 days. 'We left home last Thursday week, drove three hours from Ebbw Vale to Portsmouth, took the ferry from there to Bilbao. Thirty-six hours. Then drove to Carcassonne from there. This time we'd brought our bikes and on Saturday we climbed the Col du Tourmalet together, reached the top and then went back down, had a bit to eat in the camper van and then watched the race go by.'
Though Geraint Thomas will always be their hero, they couldn't help noticing Pogacar in the group of favourites. 'The way he sits on the bike,' Glenn said. 'He makes it seem just effortless,' Louis added. They are now on their way to Avignon and from there to the foot of Mont Ventoux which they will climb together on Tuesday morning, again before the race.
This time, they are going to stay high on the Ventoux and see the riders on the upper slopes of one of the iconic climb. I joke that the Ventoux only gets really bad when they pass through Chalet Reynard and turn left to begin the last six kilometres. They say they cannot wait. I mention to Glenn that it must be some experience to make this trip with his boy.
Suddenly this old rugby player, who doesn't seem like he would have been a pushover on the pitch, has tears in his eyes. 'I'm sorry, I'm getting upset now, emotional. It means the world to me to be able to do this. I never had anything like this with my own father. He was a miner, Marine Colliery at Blackwood in South Wales. When he was 40 and I was 10, he had a stroke. He didn't have very good mobility after that and I never could do anything like this with him. Doing this with Louis is unbelievable, just unbelievable.'