NEELTJE JANS, Netherlands // German rider Andre Greipel won a rain-drenched second stage of the Tour de France in a sprint finish on Sunday, while defending champion Vincenzo Nibali and Tour contender Nairo Quintana lost valuable time after dropping behind the front group.
As the riders approached the finish, Briton Mark Cavendish attacked first, but Greipel timed his riposte perfectly to overtake him near the line for his seventh Tour stage win.
Cavendish was caught by Peter Sagan and Swiss veteran Fabian Cancellara, who took the race leader's yellow jersey from overnight leader Rohan Dennis.
Cancellara, 34, who first wore the leader’s yellow jersey in 2004, is riding in his last Tour.
“Now everything is a bonus,” said Cancellara, who finished third in Saturday’s opening stage amid punishingly hot conditions. “I had to find the energy to do the sprint, I had no energy left from yesterday.”
The course, which took the riders along the Dutch coastline towards the heart of the Zeeland Delta, proved treacherous as heavy winds and driving rain caused splits through the field.
While it was a bad day for Nibali, Quintana and Frenchman Thibaut Pinot – an outsider for the Tour win – things went well for Chris Froome, the 2013 Tour champion, and two-time winner Alberto Contador.
They managed to get in the front group along with Greipel, Cavendish and the other sprinters. Froome finished seventh and gained four seconds on Contador, who crossed the line in 13th.
Nibali, Quintana and Frenchman Pinot all rolled in one minute, 28 seconds behind. That deficit could hurt them when the race hits the mountains later on.
“This is a huge advantage for us to be sitting in this position after one flat day out on the road,” Froome said. “But this is a three-week race and things do change on a daily basis. We’re ahead today but who knows what’s in store for us for the rest of the week?”
Sunday’s 166-kilometre trek started out from the Dutch city of Utrecht, where Dennis had won Saturday’s individual time trial in a record average time.
As visibility worsened, the wind became stronger and the rain lashed down, crashes were going to be inevitable.
“It turned out to be hectic, chaos, wind, rain,” Cancellara said. “It turned from beautiful weather to a situation we didn’t expect to be in.”
Wilco Kelderman, Geraint Thomas – Froome’s Team Sky teammate – and Thomas De Gendt all fell following an intermediate sprint as the stage passed through the Dutch city of Rotterdam.
With side winds causing havoc, the peloton was split apart with 50km to go, as 26 riders including Froome and Contador, formed a front group while Nibali, Pinot and Dennis were dropped.
Quintana was huddled into a third group further behind, but the Colombian managed to catch up with Nibali and the yellow jersey group, which had drifted about a minute behind Froome, Contador and the front-runners.
“One second Nibali was next to me, and the next I couldn’t believe it when I heard he was distanced,” Froome said. “I’m very thankful to my teammates for keeping me in front all day and especially when it mattered, when the split took place. Two days gone now and I couldn’t really hope for more.”
The stage finish in the heart of the Zeeland Delta offered a wild and spectacular backdrop.
Riders rode over a pier with waves crashing beneath them, and then snaked through treacherously narrow streets packed with crowds.
The Tour swings over the border into Belgium on Monday for Stage 3.
Cancellara delighted by return of time bonuses
Since 2008, there had been no time bonus awarded at the Tour de France stage finishes. They are back this year and Cancellara made the most of them on Sunday to erase the disappointment of his opening time trial.
After failing in his bid to win the Tour’s opening stage for a record sixth time on the streets of Utrecht, Cancellara sprinted to a third-place finish at the end of the rain-soaked second stage of the Tour. That was enough to earn him a four-second bonus and the yellow jersey.
“To finish third here against the three best sprinters in the world is a big achievement,” said Cancellara, who ended the chaotic stage on the shores of the North Sea behind Greipel and Sagan.
“I was really sorry yesterday, today I’m happy. Coming here and win another yellow jersey, for a 29th day, it’s great,” said Cancellara, who wore the coveted tunic for the first time 11 years ago.
Competing in his final Tour de France, the 34-year-old time trial and one-day classics specialist was involved in a bad crash in March, receiving two minor fractures to his lower back at the E3 Harelbeke classic.
The crash forced him to miss the cobbled classics he loves so much, returning to competition at the end of May.
“It was not a nice time,” Cancellara said. “Not being at the classics was not a good thing for my motivation, and it’s only last weekend that I started to feel good again.”
Cancellara said that an encouraging text message from sports director Josu Larrazabal he received on Saturday lifted his morale. “It was one of the best messages I received in months,” he said. “This was maybe the key I needed to open the door. It opened today and I’m back in yellow.”
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