'I don't have an explanation' – Visma left without answers as Jonas Vingegaard suffers heavy defeat in Tour de France time trial

Visma-Lease a Bike had "no explanation" for why Jonas Vingegaard lost more than a minute to GC rival Tadej Pogačar in the time trial stage 5 of the Tour de France, with the Dane dropping to fourth overall.

Vingegaard endured a day of suffering, without any reward in Caen, with his clock always running red across the 33km of racing. By the time he reached the finish of. stage 5 after 38 minutes in the saddle, he was exhausted and defeated.

Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) jumped above him overall with their impressive rides, but the most important development was the expansion of his gap to race leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

What was just eight seconds at the start of the stage had ballooned out to a deficit of 1:13, with more than one mental and physical mountain now to climb if he is to somehow wrest the yellow jersey off the Slovenian's shoulders. Visma were left without an answer.

"No, I don't have an explanation," said Visma-Lease a Bike Head of Racing Girscha Niermann frankly at the team bus.

"Before the TT, everything was good, so there were no problems. In the TT, he's not able to talk to me; I'm only able to talk to him, but we already heard after a few kilometres that he was 8 seconds down on Remco, and he just lost time over the whole time trial.

"I haven't spoken to him yet, but of course, we hoped for more."

After warming down and processing the defeat, Vingegaard himself revealed it was just a bad day that had seen him struggle around Caen, with no excuses for his lacklustre performance.

"My legs were not feeling so good, so the result is matching my legs. I was fighting my bike and my legs today," said Vingegaard after stage 5.

"Luckily, the Tour is long and I still believe in myself, in our plan, and still believe that we can win."

Just poor legs

Visma, too, had no excuses, with the strategy being simple, and the changing wind affecting all of the GC riders, who all set off in the last half an hour of racing. Again, they confirmed that it was just a case of poor legs.

"That's true [that the wind changed], but that also counts for Remco and for Tadej, so that's not the excuse for a lesser time trial," said Niermann.

"Beforehand, we knew Remco was the favourite and he won, rightfully so, but certainly with Jonas and Matteo [Jorgenson], we hoped for a better time.

"In a TT like this, you can't really get the strategy right or wrong, it's just pushing from start to finish, and doing the technical passages well. That was not the problem, but I guess that Jonas didn't have enough power today."

His team didn't say that they would now have to change their approach, as it has so far been markedly different in 2025, with their 'Classics-style' roster riding in support of the Dane already lighting things up several times in the opening five stages.

"It changes nothing in our approach; we will just go ahead. We are now 1:13 down on Tadej, and somewhere we have to find that time if Jonas wants to win the Tour," continued the Dutch team's head of racing.

"Absolutely, we didn't expect to lose that much, but it happened, and we have to go from here, and we will fight again tomorrow."

With no real other option, Vingegaard remained bullish and can be buoyed by how he raced before stage 5. With all of this Tour's mountains still to come at the end of week one and into the second and third weeks, the Tour is far from over. The Dane has just lost one of the many battles that make up the war for the yellow jersey.

"I was a bit surprised about my legs, but sometimes that's racing," said Vingegaard.

When asked what he thought of his deficit, he replied: "That it's about a minute."

"Of course, one minute seems like quite a lot, but in the last few years, the Tour has been won by a bit more than that."

His first chance to strike back could come on the punchy finishes onto Vire Normandie on stage 6 and the Mûr-de-Bretagne on stage 7, but he will likely be looking to hold on before mounting an all-out assault on the brutal stage 10 parcours on Bastille Day.

Finally, he will be in the mountains and his favoured terrain, after a week of sprints and punchy finals, all better-suited to Pogačar. Today was a real test that he failed, but there will be many more where passing them could see him take down the world champion's supremacy.

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