Visma-Lease a Bike said that their hopes of turning the tables at the last minute on Tour de France leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) on stage 19 to La Plagne were dashed by the overnight change in the stage route and resulting reduction in difficulty.
Cows infected by a virus and the consequent culling of several herds indirectly meant that on an already short but very mountainous stage, two key early ascents, the category 2 Côte d'Héry-sur-Ugine and the category 1 Col des Saisies, were removed, reducing the stage length by 30 kilometres to 95km and leaving it with only the three final climbs of the original course.
The stage was then played out on the last ascent of La Plagne, with GC runner-up Jonas Vingegaard abandoning plans to try and upend his time loss of nearly 4:30 on Pogačar, instead shadowing the race leader to the line.
Finally, neither Vingegaard nor Pogačar could quite catch stage winner Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers). But as Visma sports director Grischa Niermann said post-stage, any hopes of repeating their previous mountains strategy of putting riders in the early break and then isolating Pogačar had gone up in smoke because of the much easier course.
Although there are two stages left, neither are in any way as difficult as the preceding days through the Alps, and Vingegaard seemed to all but concede overall defeat when he wished Pogačar his congratulations at the summit of La Plagne. But in reality, the Dane and his team had already given up any real hope of upending the GC even before the stage had started.
When Niermann was asked by reporters exactly when they had decided to ditch the plan, he answered directly: "This morning when we discussed what we could do with the new stage route and the changed parcours. We were pretty sure this was not the day to win back 4:30."
"If stage had been different, we would have tried to get riders ahead, get some riders on the previous climb before. But like this it was not really possible."
After switching to 'Plan B' this morning, but then failing to catch Arensman and get the stage win, either, Niermann said that it was impossible to speculate about what could have happened had Vingegaard tried to drop Pogačar sooner on the climb.
"Maybe Pogacar would have been on his wheel earlier and he would have countered him, we'll never know, it's a pity," he reflected.
"I didn't see the sprint yet, but I don't think it was a mistake. Maybe they started to sprint just a little too late."
When going for the team plan, he told Wielerflits, it was "follow, because we were sure UAE and Tadej would be for the stage".
"It wasn't possible to make up 4:30 today. We wanted to win, and this was the way to beat Tadej [for the stage], by making him work. But he clearly wanted to win himself and they miscalculated. Chapeau to Thymen and Ineos."
Niermann himself put a brave face on what, at 48 hours before the definitive verdict in Paris, looks almost certain to be Vingegaard's second runner's-up spot against Pogačar.
"Coming into the Tour, we knew it'd be super-hard to win against Tadej and UAE, their team is going really well," he reflected.
"Of course, we'd like to win five stages instead of one, but it is like it is. The mood in the team is good, and of course we want to win. But if that's not the case, we have to accept somebody else is better."
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