2015 Tour de France results and standings, Stage 2: Crosswinds shake up yellow jersey competition

A wet and windy ride from Utrecht to Zeeland gave the 2015 Tour de France its first taste of other chaos. The Tour organizers were determined to make the first three stages through the Netherlands exciting. They got their wish, and several general classification contenders may have suffered tremendous blows in the process.

Andre Greipel won the stage after a bunch sprint finish into the unprotected Zeeland Delta. He’ll be the first bearer of the green jersey as the Tour’s points leader. Fabian Cancellara will wear the Maillot Jaune for a hilly Stage 3 after finishing third in the sprint. He also finished third during Saturday’s time trial. Stage 1 winner Rohan Dennis fell far back in the overall standings.

More significantly as far as the final podium is concerned, Nairo Quintana and Vincenzo Nibali lost massive time -- nearly a minute and a half -- to rivals Chris Froome, Alberto Contador, Tejay Van Garderen and co. Both have their teams to blame. In the elements, neither Astana nor Movistar had the firepower nor savvy to keep their team leaders near a lead group that tore away from the peloton with under 40 kilometers to go.

A bad day almost turned disastrous for Nibali when he suffered a punctured tire with roughly 28 kilometers to go. Fortunately, he made up the distance to the chase group after a quick change by drafting behind a few friendly opponent team cars, but the incident was a stark reminder that this year’s Tour will be very different from last year’s. In 2014, Nibali won Stage 2 to take the yellow jersey.

Both Nibali and Quintana have 19 stages to make up the time difference, and Stage 3 should be more to their liking. There’s no question their hopes for glory have suffered, however.