Just 87 days have elapsed since defending Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard crashed and suffered a collapsed lung and broken ribs and a fractured collarbone. Only 54 days ago, he rode outside for the first time since that crash, and competing for a third Tour de France title seemed out of the question.
Even before the start of the Tour de France, Vingegaard said he was happy to just be in the race, but on stage 2, his remarkable comeback got even more impressive when he had no problems following a searing attack by Tadej Pogačar on the double-digit gradients of the Côte de San Luca.
While Pogačar moved into the yellow jersey of race leader, Vingegaard is hot on his heels in third on the same time along with Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost). They all gained 21 seconds over the remaining Tour de France contenders like Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe).
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"I think this went way better than I ever expected, so I'm really satisfied," Vingegaard said to NBC after the stage.
"That I was able to follow Tadej on the second climb of San Luca ... I think this is probably one of the stages we feared the most, or we actually expected me to lose time.
"Honestly speaking I didn't have a good preparation for this race. I only had one and a half months to prepare, probably, so I think I can be super happy with with how everything is going so far.
"I knew already before my crash that the stage today maybe suited him better than it suited me, and especially after my crash, I was even more behind. At least I can say now that if I'm not back at least I'm super, super close."
There were a few words between the two after the initial attack, when Vingegaard wouldn't pull through. He explained, "he wanted me to pull on the kicker there but I waited until the top of that one because otherwise I knew he'd attack me again. And then from that moment, I started working with him and tried to get some time on all the other competitors."
Vingegaard's performance somewhat put to bed who is the leader of the team, with Paris-Nice winner Matteo Jorgenson finishing 21 seconds down after taking a tumble during the stage.
"We know we who is the leader. With Jonas, we have a double winner of the Tour," Merijn Zeeman said to NBC. "So everyone is working for him."
Jorgenson crashed together with Wout van Aert because of a hole in the road, Zeeman said, but both were relatively unscathed.
"When I heard I was, of course, concerned about it," Vingegaard said. "Luckily, they didn't hurt themselves. It's only scratches as I hear it. I think that's lucky, because that's two super, important helpers and teammates for me."
