"Don't panic" was the order of the day at Visma-Lease a Bike on Friday, as stage 13 of the Tour de France briefly threatened to not go to plan, after some canny riding form UAE Team Emirates.
It's unlikely that any of the team are fans of Dad's Army or particularly knowledgable of the catchphrases of Lance Corporal Jones, but maybe we will find his most famous line – "Don't panic" – littered throughout the next series of Tour de France: Unchained.
UAE, the team of race leader Tadej Pogačar, managed to infiltrate stage 13's big break with Adam Yates, and it briefly looked like the kind of move which could take minutes on the peloton at the finish, in turn bumping the UAE rider up the general classification; the Briton was just under six minutes off the podium at the start of the day. It was therefore a worry for Visma, the team of defending champion Jonas Vingegaard.
"It was clear in a stage with so much wind and opportunity that it would not be an easy stage just for sprinters which is why we should be attentive and with all the team," Mauro Gianetti, UAE's team boss, explained. "In that moment Adam took the opportunity to jump in just to close the gap and it broke the peloton and we were in a very good position in a very good moment and the other teams had an obligation to work, so it was good. A good situation for us that we needed to be attentive to, to see if this situation happened."
"It was not the original plan but when he went it was really good for us as we did not have to do any work," Pogačar said. "I didn't spend a lot of energy but Adam couldn't wait to get in the mountains. He had climbing legs. We really raced great today as a team. I’m proud and happy with how it went."
"If we just spent energy ourselves it would not be good but now we see today with the race we have spent less energy compared to any other team so at the moment it’s good," Gianetti continued. "I think the tactic is to be aggressive with sense, not aggressive with no sense. At the moment we are playing this game."
It was a canny move, which forced teams behind to chase, including Visma. However, the Dutch team seemed calm at the finish, even insisting that it didn't really matter. Whether that is the case, or whether they could just say so given the danger was over, is another question.
"It was a crazy day, we expected this," Grischa Niermann, Visma-Lease a Bike's DS, said. "Adam did well, slipping in the first big move. For us, it was not the ideal situation, but we didn't panic. There were a lot of teams that wanted to chase, and we helped through Bart Lemmen. If that group with Adam would have taken five, six or seven minutes today it wouldn't have been the end of the world, so there was no time to panic."
It is clear that even on designated 'sprint' days - Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) won, after all - that things are not calm in the bunch. Teams know that gaps can be made on any terrain, especially with the added threat of crosswinds thrown into the mix. This is not the torpor of stage 10, but a race which is threatening to blow apart at any moment.
One moment Visma did look in control was when the race briefly split into échelons with less than 70km to go of the day. The Dutch team had five riders, including Vingegaard, in a small group. It might have included Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) too, and it might have come to nothing, but it showed Visma's willingness to be aggressive.
"If there are crosswinds it's better to go yourself than to wait for another team to do it, that's the conclusion," Niermann explained. "The chance that Tadej is not there, not on Jonas' wheel, is really small, but if we wouldn't have tried someone else would have done."
"With the wind it was going to be hard whether we went for the stage or not," Visma domestique Matteo Jorgenson added. "It was going to be a really difficult day because it's so nervous and teams are going to try no matter what. It's better if we try ourselves. It wasn't quite as hard as a mountain stage, but it was still a hard day."
In the end, the race came back together, Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) almost won, finishing second, and times on GC remained the same. However, Friday was proof that splits can happen at any point on the road to Nice. Just don't panic.
