It was the first stage of the 2020 Tour de France in sunny Nice. Except it wasn’t sunny – heavy rain turned the roads as slippery as ice and riders went down left, right and centre. A rider-led neutralisation of the final descent was the calm before a scrappy sprint finish, won in storming style by UAE Emirates’ Alexandre Kristoff, putting him in yellow for the first time in his career. But that was almost the least surprising thing about the stage.
