'Vingegaard gets transformed by the Tour de France' - former winner Vincenzo Nibali predicts Danish champion will radically raise his game against Tadej Pogačar this July

2014 Tour de France winner Vincenzo Nibali has predicted that Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) will be a 'transformed rider' this July as the Danish star battles to put his Tour victory tally back on a level footing with arch-rival and defending champion Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

Between 2012 and 2019, Nibali was the one rider to break Team Sky/Ineos stranglehold on the Tour de France, clinching the overall win in 2014 as well as four stages whilst leading the overall for a total of 19 days.

Also a winner of the Giro d'Italia in 2013 and 2016, as well as the Vuelta a España in 2010, Nibali told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sportt that while Pogačar is the favourite, Vingegaard will give him a serious run for his money.

"This time there's no change to the favourites assuming there are no unexpected incidents," Nibali said regarding each contender's chances of winning. "On a scale of 1 to 10, Pogačar deserves a 10. But if the subject here is specifically the Tour, then Vingegaard gets a 9. Not so far off then."

"While we're at it, I'd give [Remco] Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) an 8, and so there we've got the entire podium of 2024 in the same order. Right now, effectively, there's nothing to make you think that the hierarchy of the race has changed."

Known as Lo Squalo for his aggressive, non-conformist attacking style before he retired at the end of 2022, Nibali predicted that the two top favourites had radically different strategies. But he warned that Vingegaard could have a 'secret' advantage over the defending champoin.

If he used his usual race strategy, Pogačar would attack every key day of the Tour, Nibali predicted, whilst Vingegaard was more given to single, knock-out blows, something which had worked well in the past in the Dane's Tour victories of 2022 and 2023.

Furthermore, "Vingegaard is able to transform himself in the Tour," Nibali argued, "he makes it the centre of everything and he really expresses himself in full. On top of that, there's a factor that's barely been mentioned, which is the toughness of the route: 50,000 metres of elevation gain, five summit finishes. All of that is definitely won't displease Vingegaard, for sure."

As for Remco Evenepoel, third overall last year, Nibali said he was convinced that the Belgian could gain a significant advantage on the stage 5 time trial in Rouen. Furthermore, although the Soudal-QuickStep racer had not been in a great place in the Critérium du Dauphiné mountains, the facts from the key warm-up race for July "have often been overturned at the Tour. He could be a loose cannon," Nibali concluded.

Europe has been blasted by a heatwave this week, but Nibali did not feel it would necessarily be a factor, even though Pogačar has seemingly struggled with heat in the past.

"He suffered from it, maybe. But if I think about last year's Tour, at the start in Firenze it was boiling and in the last days on the French Riviera it wasn't cool, either," Nibali pointed out to Gazzetta dello Sport. "And yet Pogacar had no problems."

"Tadej always starts off like a rocket and in some Tours in the past, he had finished on a bit of a downhill. But that definitely didn't happen in 2024".

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