Visma-Lease a Bike began stage five of the Tour de France hungry to hit back at Tadej Pogačar, after the Slovenian struck an early psychological blow the day before in Rouen.
But just hours later, the team were left aghast after their leader Jonas Vingegaard shipped more than a minute to Pogačar. That wasn't in the script.
Vingegaard had started the race in impressive style, matching Pogačar's accelerations on the steep finishing circuit on stage four, but he appeared to struggle in the Normandy heat and the time loss soon tallied up.
"I have no explanation," Visma DS, Grischa Niermann, said at the finish. "Before the time trial everything was good, there were no problems, but in the time trial he’s not able to talk to me, and I'm only able to talk to him.
"We already heard after a few kilometres that he was eight seconds down on Remco [Evenepoel]. He then just lost time over the whole TT. I haven't spoken with him yet but, of course, we hoped for more."
Vingegaard looked to be uncomfortable on his saddle for much of his effort, regularly adjusting himself in order to maintain some semblance of an aerodynamic position. However, Visma said at the finish that the team's initial thoughts were that the time loss was simply down to a lack of power compared to both the stage winner, Remco Evenepoel, and Pogačar who is now in yellow.
"I think in a TT like this you can't really get a strategy right or wrong," Niermann stated. "It's just pushing from start to finish and then doing the technical parts as well as you can. But that was not the problem."
How does the result alter the team's strategy in the forthcoming days? “It changes nothing in our overall approach,” Niermann added. "We just go ahead as planned but we're around 1:20 down on Tadej now [1:13 - ed], so we will have to find that time somewhere if Jonas wants to win the Tour. We didn’t expect that much of a loss. It happened though, we have to deal with it and we’ll fight again tomorrow."
By the time the GC favourites took to the start line, the wind had picked up from earlier this morning when riders underwent course recons, although a matter-of-fact Niermann would not use that as an explanation for the performance of both Vingegaard and his teammate Matteo Jorgenson, who is nine seconds further back on GC than the Dane.
"I think that's not an excuse for a lesser time trial," Niermann said. "Remco was of course the favourite, and rightfully so, but certainly with both Jonas and Matteo we hoped for better times."
"It was definitely windier than the recon," Jorgenson later explained when he spoke to gathered journalists. "The recon was at 10am so it was a long time ago. It definitely felt a lot more blustery and I was definitely getting pushed around a bit, but it was the same for all of us at the end. There's definitely no excuses at all there."
