You cannot fault them for trying. In the wake of a rider like Tadej Pogačar, it would have been easy for Visma-Lease a Bike to have felt defeated at the Tour de France before it had even begun. Their leader, Jonas Vingegaard, had suffered in his preparation for the three-week stage race, battling to recover from his brutal injuries after a catastrophic crash in Itzulia two months ago. Pogačar, on the other hand, had been in Italy winning the Giro d’Italia, looking every bit the Grand Tour champion. The scales were not balanced.
Yet, when the start of the Tour rolled round, Vingegaard was able to surprise. He could follow Pogačar during the opening hilly stages of the race in Italy, and didn’t lose too much time to the Slovenian in the time trial either. He kept stating that he wasn’t in the best form of his life due to the broken bones he’s spent the last two months recovering from, but his performances on the bike – for the first week of the Tour at least – were saying otherwise. He even outsprinted Pogačar after an attacking stage 11 to Le Lioran. It looked like the playing field was level.
That was until the real mountains loomed. Two important general classification days came on stages 14 and 15 of the race, rounding out the second weekend with a bang. On stage 14, Vingegaard limited his losses, only conceding 39 seconds to Pogačar when the UAE Team Emirates rider made his attack on the Pla d'Adet. On stage 15, however, the claims that Visma-Lease a Bike had been making regarding Vingegaard’s subpar form began to somewhat ring true.
The Danish rider tried his utmost to play Pogačar at his own game on the 197 kilometre challenging stage from Loudenvielle to the summit of Plateau de Beille. His team took initiative and controlled the stage from the start, riding at an eye-wateringly high tempo to slim down the peloton and set-up their leader, Vingegaard, for a trademark attack. That move eventually came early on the final climb, still with 10 kilometres of incline remaining. To the Dutch team’s dismay, Pogačar was able to follow Vingegaard with relative ease. Their efforts were not going to pay off.
“I never doubted our plan. We had a good plan and it’s been working for the last two years. We know I could handle a lot of fatigue, and I could also today, so I’m not disappointed and I don’t regret anything. We did the plan perfectly, and even better than the plan. He was just better, that’s how it is. Congrats to him,” Vingegaard commented dryly after the stage when questioned about if his team could have done anything differently.
“We talked about it, Matteo [Jorgenson] had to do a 15/20 minute effort from the bottom, and that’s what he did. He did a better effort than we spoke about, all the guys did today, the team did super, super well. As I said, I can’t be disappointed at all.”
Vingegaard’s relative positivity was understandable after the stage. Himself and his team had done all that they could, but it just wasn’t enough against a stronger man. They had planned and worked to perfection during the stage, but Pogačar had the better legs when it mattered.
“We finished second. We were coming to win the stage and to take back some time on GC, but it didn’t happen, and Pogačar took some time on Jonas. I’m super proud of the team, and Jonas did a super good job, but we had an opponent who was even stronger, so chapeau to Tadej, chapeau to UAE,” Grischa Niermann, Visma-Lease a Bike’s sports director, added. “They have a good margin now. We have to accept that, and for the moment we can only be happy and proud of the performance we put in.”
So what comes next for the team of the defending two-time Tour de France champion? This year’s race has just under one week remaining and there still are opportunities for Visma-Lease a Bike to make a difference. The Dutch squad have come back from this sort of defeat before, and their mentality will be the most important thing when it comes to continuing the battle for yellow.
“We will fight to the end, absolutely. But right now, everyone sees that Tadej is the strongest in the race,” Niermann added. “Tadej has shown the last days too. We are not surprised, we hoped for a different outcome, but that’s not the case. I’m not disappointed, because the guys did a super, super good job. The last two years it was the other way round, but for now Pogačar is the strongest rider here. There is still a week to go.”
Niermann and Vingegaard know better than anyone else how quickly the scales can shift in a three week stage race. One bad day, one mistake, one oversight, could spell the end of Pogačar’s current reign. At the moment, the odds are in the favour of UAE Team Emirates, but if Visma-Lease a Bike still holds on to the dream, the race for Tour de France victory is not over until the line is crossed in Nice.
“The dream remains winning the Tour de France,” Niermann concluded.
