Visma-Lease a Bike have allayed fears that Jonas Vingegaard had been injured in the fraught, crash-filled start to stage 15 of the Tour de France, after the Dane was caught up behind a massive pile-up in the opening kilometres, with race leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) in a front group ahead of the numerous fallers.
The numbers two, three and four in the GC standings, Vingegaard, Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Oscar Onley (Picnic-PostNL) were all affected by the crash, which happened on what was supposed to play out as an uneventful transition stage.
Neither Vingegaard nor the other GC challengers came off as badly as Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor), one of the heaviest fallers and personally put his dislocated shoulder back in its socket. However, as Visma later said, getting Vingegaard back into the same front group of 20-25 riders containing Pogačar was crucial.
Nerves grew even more frayed as multiple riders in the front group, including Visma's Wout van Aert and Victor Campenaerts, continued to attack, with Pogačar moving away in pursuit of Matteo Jorgenson. Pogačar later explained that he was not happy seeing three Visma riders taking off in a break, but dropped back and opted to wait for Vingegaard once only two Visma riders were up the road.
After about 15 kilometres, Vingegaard managed to regain contact with the Pogačar group - only for numerous more attacks to materialize. But by then, at least, the split between the race leader and his three closest followers on GC had been resolved, and Visma could relax a little.
"We didn't see so much what happened, but there was a crash, Jonas was caught behind in a crash, and then there was a front group of 20 -25 guys, they were the only ones got through with Tadej Pogacar," Visma sports director Grischa Niermann told reporters later as Vingegaard warmed down close by.
"It was all a bit chaotic because the whole time, the jury said the team cars could come through and close the gap, but the cars did not go through, so that made it harder for Jonas to come back.
"Then in the front group, of course, they kept attacking, it was not possible to slow them down. At the end, it was always clear that Tadej had no intention of going in the breakaway, so in the end, there was no problem. But of course, it was always hectic."
Vingegaard rolled across the line in 66th place, with his 4:13 gap on Pogačar remaining unchanged on GC. He was also presumably very thankful that he had not been any more unlucky and actually crashed.
"He was not down, but at one point he changed bikes," Niermann said. "He was worried somebody had gone into his rear derailleur."
"Afterwards, things calmed down and we could change the bike back, and he finished off on his normal one again."
Vingegaard had not had to close more than a 100-metre gap in person, Niermann said, but the whole day had been a memorably intense one.
"If we had known that the front group weren't coming back, then we'd have called everybody back [to pace Vingegaard in pursuit of Pogačar], Niermann explained.
"But we thought that the best thing would be if the breakaways in the front group went away, then the rest of the group," - with Pogačar - "would slow down."
That was what happened, but as Niermann added, that was only part of the day's whole ultra-frantic narrative.
"The problem was that after Jonas was back, the other teams were not happy, so they started chasing the breakaway again," Niermann said. "It turned out to be a hard stage."
The participation of so many Vismas in the breaks of the day, though, confirms that - as Sepp Kuss hinted after stage 14 - the Dutch team's strategy is changing.
Vingegaard's GC position remains the top priority, as Niermann effectively confirmed. But with Pogačar so far ahead overall and looking increasingly invulnerable, for Visma, the goal of taking stage wins is no longer as secondary as it perhaps was when the race left Lille two weeks ago.
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