In this data-driven era of powermeters, Jonas Vingegaard’s brilliant wattage could never have stayed hidden under a bushel for long, but an element of providence still helped to fast-track his development from rider of promise to Tour de France champion.
Primož Roglič's early crash at the 2021 Tour was cycling’s equivalent of the injury to Drew Bledsoe that suddenly thrust Tom Brady into the limelight for the New England Patriots two decades earlier. Vingegaard was unexpectedly asked to quarterback Jumbo-Visma though the rest of the Tour, but he proved up to the task, placing second overall to Tadej Pogačar in Paris.
Jumbo-Visma carried two leaders into the 2022 Tour, but more ill fortune for Roglič and further strides forward from Vingegaard would firmly establish the hierarchy by the midpoint of the race. On the Col du Granon, thanks in part to Roglič’s earlier onslaught on the Galibier, Vingegaard moved into the yellow jersey, which he never once looked like surrendering.
Ahead of the 2023 Tour, there will be no questions about the leadership depth chart. Just as the Patriots traded Bledsoe after he had served as back-up for Brady’s first Super Bowl win, Jumbo-Visma have opted against retaining Roglič as a safety net for the Tour, with the Slovenian instead deployed to lead at the Giro d’Italia.
That decision was surely informed by the nigh-on 70km of time trialling that features on the Giro route, but it also doubles as a considerable vote of confidence in Vingegaard and his ability to withstand the pressures of defending a Tour title. Even without Roglič, Jumbo-Visma will still have arguably the strongest team in the race, with Wout van Aert, Sepp Kuss and Steven Kruijswijk all featuring, but the responsibility of winning the Tour now rests on the shoulders of one man alone: Vingegaard.
It's a cliché, of course, to say that retaining the Tour is more difficult than winning it, but there is a kernel of truth in the observation all the same. Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) has confessed to the malaise he felt after he had reached the top of the mountain in 2019, Vincenzo Nibali’s Tour defence of 2015 was troubled, and Chris Froome (Israel-Premier Tech), so implacable for much of his career, betrayed signs of unease even before he crashed out of the 2014 race.
When Vingegaard quietly exited stage left following his public acclamation in Copenhagen last summer, a narrative took hold that the Dane was burnt-out or perhaps even overwhelmed by his Tour success and sudden fame. The idea stemmed from Vingegaard’s two-month break from racing and was inadvertently fanned by an oft-quoted statement from Jumbo-Visma DS Frans Maassen.
Vingegaard offered a wordless response with two stage wins on his return to racing at the CRO Tour in September, and he downplayed the idea further in a recent interview with Het Nieuwsblad. “That was all exaggerated, the media has created a story that wasn't there. Why should I hide?” he said. “I celebrated my victory and then went home. It was no more or less than that.”
There is no doubt, of course, that Vingegaard is an essentially private man, as was clear by his evident discomfort at being the centre of attention at his post-Tour appearances. “You sometimes feel like a circus monkey,” he admitted, even it was more an observation than a complaint. He knows it just comes with the territory.
At the 2021 Tour, Vingegaard dealt almost matter-of-factly with his newfound status in his media interactions, while on the final weekend of last year’s race, he showed considerably more poise and understanding of context than his more experienced teammate Van Aert when asked about the credibility of Jumbo-Visma’s performances.
The scrutiny, the obligations and the pressures will be altogether higher, mind, as Vingegaard builds towards the 2023 Tour. A year ago, he had the relative luxury of preparing for a Tour that was still being billed by many as a Pogačar-Roglič duel. This time out, the 26-year-old will spend the entire season in the glare of the spotlight, his every result and utterance parsed for indications as to his prospects in July.
No other crown in cycling, not even the world title itself, rests as heavily as this one. Managing that mental burden will be a crucial part of Vingegaard’s road towards the Grand Départ in Bilbao, though Jumbo-Visma’s Grand Tour configuration suggests that they have no doubts about his ability to scale the same physical heights as he has done these past two Julys.
And with good reason. Vingegaard is, after all, the only rider in the peloton who can claim to have Pogačar’s number. He hasn’t been dropped by the Slovenian on a mountain at the Tour since Tignes on stage 9 in 2021. In four full weeks of Tour racing since, Vingegaard has withstood every single Pogačar salvo - and there have been many - while issuing two decisive beatings of his own on the Granon and Hautacam. Those displays, not to mention Vingegaard’s remarkable progress against the watch, have persuaded Jumbo-Visma to weigh in fully behind him in 2023.
Across last year, at the Tour and elsewhere, Jumbo-Visma often seemed to occupy a different plane of reality to the rest of the peloton, as demonstrated by chilling shows of collective force at Mantes-la-Ville, Harelbeke and Hautacam. In 2023, Kuss, Van Aert, Kruijswijk and Tiesj Benoot will again form a fearsome climbing guard on Vingegaard's behalf at the Tour, but for all their combined strength, none of them could realistically step up to the plate to beat Pogačar if their lone leader were to falter.
And, for all Vingegaard’s quality last July, the role played in his victory by Roglič, even in his diminished state, cannot be overstated. Jumbo-Visma’s offensive on the Galibier on stage 11 was so successful precisely because of its dual-pronged nature. Pogačar, perhaps wrongly, felt compelled to track Roglič’s accelerations with the same vigour as he did Vingegaard’s, and he paid a heavy price for that enthusiasm on the Granon.
On the one hand, it’s fair to wonder if Jumbo-Visma have made a mistake of presumption in not sending Roglič to the Tour alongside Vingegaard, considering how important that tandem was to their anti-Pogačar strategy last year. On the other, it’s heartening to see the team of the yellow jersey offer such a rebuttal of a Tour-centric view of the cycling world.
The intrigue of the Giro, whose field already features Remco Evenepoel, Geraint Thomas, Thibaut Pinot and João Almeida has been increased further by the addition of Roglič. Vingegaard will lead alone at the Tour, but cycling, fortunately, has more than one Super Bowl per season.
Other storylines to follow in 2023:
- When the Giro route was unveiled last October, there were murmurs that the 70km of time trialling might tempt Wout van Aert into testing his ability to challenge for the GC of a Grand Tour, but the Belgian has instead opted for the tried and trusted in 2023, and with good reason. Van Aert’s Monuments palmarès is not (yet) commensurate with his reputation, and after COVID-19 ruled him out of the Tour of Flanders last year, he has again made the Ronde and Paris-Roubaix the centrepiece of his Spring. Mindful of spreading himself too thinly, Van Aert has also suggested he won’t target the green jersey at the Tour with an eye to the August Worlds in Glasgow. It would be a surprise if he didn't carry off at least one of the three biggest one-day races on his calendar this year.
- After finishing 9th overall at the 2021 Giro, Tobias Foss approached last year’s corsa rosa with considerable ambition, but the race proved to be an ordeal. The Norwegian more than salvaged his season, of course, with a surprise victory in the time trial at the World Championships, and now he will look to go again at the 2023 Giro. Roglič and new arrival Wilco Kelderman will be ahead of him on the depth chart, but the two flat time trials in the opening week present Foss with an obvious chance to join them in the upper reaches of the standings before the mountains.
- Olav Kooij is only 21 years of age, but the sprinter has already picked up 15 wins in his two professional seasons to date. His first victory at WorldTour level came at the Tour de Pologne in August, though sprint cognoscenti had already long been raving about his graceful turn of speed. Kooij is destined to win more and bigger races in 2023, but Jumbo-Visma’s GC focus – not to mention Van Aert’s mastery of all trades – seems to place a limit on his prospects of riding and winning at Grand Tours.
- Jumbo-Visma’s two most notable signings this winter are homecomings of sorts. Wilco Kelderman spent the first five years of his career with the team before moving to Sunweb in 2017. He returns a more experienced and consistent rider, and, still only 31 years of age, he will also feel he can better his third-place finish from the 2020 Giro. Dylan van Baarle, meanwhile, spent his amateur career with the Rabobank development team but turned professional with Garmin rather than with Richard Plugge’s then-Belkin team. His Paris-Roubaix victory last year was the obvious highlight of Van Baarle’s subsequent five-year stint at Sky/Ineos Grenadiers, but his reliability across all terrains was a hallmark of his time there. He is an automatic selection for Jumbo’s eight-man Tour squad.
