Surprise! In developments everyone knew was coming because this is sport chatter and you can’t ever be defeatist, duh, and despite it being absolutely ludicrous and flying in the face of reality – erm, hello, have you checked the GC recently, Jonas? – Visma-Lease a Bike have come out fighting and declared that the Tour de France is not over. They can still beat Tadej Pogačar.
On the day that the defending champion Pogačar took his second consecutive win in the Pyrenees and his fourth of the race with eight stages still to come, Jonas Vingegaard’s deficit to Pogačar grew from 3:31 to 4:07. A third Tour title for the Dane looks a distant possibility. At least this year, anyway.
But he will not give up. He’s still in the fight. “The Tour is far from over,” he declared, resolutely. “We just have to keep trying, to keep believing that we can do something here in the race.”
In the first 10 days Visma-Lease a Bike were the most aggressive and attacking team, but on stage 12 to the Hautacam, the first mountain stage, they were found wanting and unable to isolate Pogačar. Still, though, Vingegaard believes in his teammates. “The whole team is incredibly strong,” he commented. “We just have to show it in the coming days.”
Sepp Kuss, so often Vingegaard’s final mountain lieutenant, was just as upbeat. “You have to be positive, otherwise we wouldn’t even start the Tour after the [Critérium du] Dauphiné. You have to believe, everybody in the race believes they have their chances, so it’s all relative.
“We have a good time together at the dinner table, the vibe is good, and we know from experience that there are still a lot of stages and key moments coming.” The vibes are good, but they came here to win, not to have good dinner table chat.
“It’s definitely a big deficit,” Kuss acknowledged. “If you look at that on paper you could say it’s over, but it’s bike racing, anything can happen. We saw Pogačar, he crashed on stage 11, you can be behind a split, can have a bad moment, anything can happen, and we still have the hardest stages ahead of us. You just have to focus on what you can control and take advantage when the situation is good.”
Matteo Jorgenson, Visma’s second man in the GC fight until he exploded and blew up on the Hautacam, was similarly positive. “Jonas was super strong. I'm proud of his fight,” the American said. “We’re doing our best in the race, and I really am proud of how we have raced so far, and I don't think we should be disappointed at all. There's not nothing you can do if you give your best and you're fighting every day
“We wanted to get through today and see how they were head to head in just a 20 minute effort. We’ll assess how we’re doing going forward.”
And yet all these comments are to the backdrop of the reality on the ground: Pogačar is far ahead, and undoubtedly better. Visma and Vingegaard can’t pretend otherwise. It’s a sign of Pogačar’s dominance and superiority that Vingegaard is saying that his condition is better than ever. He sped up the climb to Peyragudes at an average speed of 27.7kph, but Pogačar was better, faster, stronger. “I think I did probably my best ever performance. And to be honest, and Tadej was stronger and deserved to win so congrats to him,” Vingegaard said
“Yesterday was a terrible day for us. Until the final climb, I actually felt quite good, but then all of a sudden the lights just went out, and to be able to come back like this today is very nice for us. We're super excited.”
