There has been speculation that Jonas Vingegaard is deliberately holding himself back at this Giro d'Italia, conscious of the fact that the Tour de France is also on his radar.
Judging by the Visma-Lease a Bike rider's two stage wins to date, where he put time into his general classification rivals without blowing them out of the water, perhaps that is the case. There is also the small matter of more mountains to come at this Giro. Also, it is perhaps in his interests not to take the pink jersey too early, and get Afonso Eulálio and Bahrain Victorious to do more of the work.
However, it did not seem to the plan to hold back on Tuesday, when the Dane simply had a relatively bad day on the TT bike on stage 10. Being Vingegaard, his bad day was not catastrophic, but it was not the good day that many expected; he is still waiting to take over pink when Eulálio fades, as expected.
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"Terrible. It was terrible. It was very long and not my specialty to do a flat time trial like this. I've never been super good at it, and to be honest, I came through pretty well today," Vingegaard said in his post-race interview.
He almost three minutes behind stage winner Filippo Ganna (Netcompany-Ineos), which can be allowed, but he lost over a minute to Ganna's teammate Thymen Arensman, a GC threat, 45 seconds to Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek), and 15 seconds to Ben O'Connor (Jayco AlUla). None of this is groundbreaking, but it is time lost that Vingegaard would rather still have.
"I think that a completely flat time trial like this benefits the bigger guys a bit more. The more power you have," he said.
Vingegaard still has to do podium duties, as the leader of the mountains classification, but he's dreaming of bigger things. Arensman is now his nearest threat, 1:30 behind, with Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) just under 30 seconds further back.
"I think I'm in a good spot at the moment," he said. "Of course, I am close to the pink jersey now. It would have been nice to have the pink jersey already, but I think every day in the jersey would be a pleasure and something you have to be happy about. Of course, I'm also happy with the blue jersey; it's not a problem. In the end, I'm in a good spot."
His next outright GC opportunity comes on stage 14, with a day of back-to-back mountains in the Aosta Valley, before the showdown in the Dolomites on stage 19, and a final mountain day on stage 20.
