Tradition holds it that the yellow jersey of the Tour de France holds a press conference on the rest day, but Jumbo-Visma’s reinvention of the wheel in recent years has extended to removing even that courtesy.
Jonas Vingegaard was not available to speak to the written press in Clermont-Ferrand on Monday, with his team instead limiting his engagements to one oven-ready, pre-recorded interview, which was then served up via the team’s Telegram channel in the early evening to be reheated by media outlets around the world.
“The interview is conducted by Danish TV2,” read the dispatch from Jumbo-Visma. “A mention is appreciated.” Consider it done.
As anticipated, this Tour has quickly boiled down to a straight duel between the defending champion Vingegaard and two-time winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), who have been in a class entirely on their own every time the road has risen on this race to date.
“You could say that the third place is now at 2:40 seconds, so there are already some huge gaps in the rankings,” Vingegaard said of his duel with Pogačar. “So I think if one of us hadn’t been there, it might not have been the funniest Tour de France to watch.”
When Vingegaard put more than a minute into Pogačar on the road to Laruns on stage 5, mind, it briefly looked as though the Dane might have been on the cusp of delivering an early knock-out blow. Pogačar, however, won the next two rounds, dropping Vingegaard to win at Cauterets the following day, and then prising another eight seconds back at Puy de Dôme on Sunday.
In the overall standings, Pogačar is now just 17 seconds off Vingegaard’s lead and seemingly building momentum as the race approaches the second week. In the transcript of the interview released on Monday evening, however, Vingegaard suggested that the terrain ahead – most notably in the Alps at the weekend – is better tailored to his qualities.
“Yeah, I definitely think so. Or so it has been usually at least. And that is what we believe that I can make the difference on the longer and harder days. And the farther we get in the Tour and more fatigued everyone gets, the better we think it will be for me,” Vingegaard said.
“Some of the stages to come will feature more than one mountain and the entire day will be up and down and not just a mountaintop finish. So far, the only days that has accumulated fatigue has been stage 5 on the Marie Blanque. Those are the days that suit me the best and in the next two weeks there are days that suit me even better.”
After Vingegaard had distanced Pogačar on the Col de Marie Blanque on Wednesday, Jumbo-Visma appeared to go for the jugular the following afternoon with a grand offensive on the Col du Tourmalet. The day would instead end, however, with a show of force from Pogačar, who repeated the dose on the Puy de Dôme.
“We are actually quite happy how things went so far,” Vingegaard said. “We kind of expected that we would be behind at the moment and then have to gain some time from now on. But that is not the scenario at the moment. We are very happy to be ahead. And yes, I lost eight seconds yesterday, but I don’t think eight seconds will make the difference.”
The Tour resumes on Tuesday with the first of three rolling days that would ordinarily lend themselves to a breakaway, even if the ‘transitional’ stage appears to be going the way of the press conference. Every day, after all, can be a GC day on the modern Tour.
That said, Friday’s summit finish on the Grand Colombier looks set to be the next great rendezvous ahead of mountainous days to Morzine and Saint Gervais-Mont Blanc. “We believe a lot in what we can do there,” Vingegaard said. “We believe that we can win the Tour again this year. And we will absolutely do our best to attempt to do so.”
A year ago, Jumbo-Visma divested Pogačar of yellow on stage 11 by having Vingegaard and Primož Roglič (absent this year after winning the Giro d’Italia) attack him repeatedly on the Col du Galibier before the Dane soloed to victory atop the Col du Granon.
Asked if Jumbo-Visma had a similar strategy to “break” Pogačar again in 2023, Vingegaard said, “Yes, we have made a plan for that,” though he was coy about sharing any more with even his TV2 interviewer. “We are not going to tell you. You must see that.”
