When the route for the 2023 Tour de France was unveiled in Paris on Thursday, the marquee event of the cycling off-season was lacking a key figure. For the first time in a number of years, the reigning champion was not there to see what awaits the following July.
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) was on the other side of the world in Singapore, where Tour de France organisers ASO are holding the first of a duo of criterium events in Asia. The likes of Mark Cavendish (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl) and Greg Van Avermaet (AG2R Citroën) would catch a flight from Paris after the presentation but Vingegaard preferred to travel early for a more relaxed run-in.
There was no sign, either, of Vingegaard's fellow Jumbo-Visma stars, Primoz Roglič and Wout van Aert. And so it was left to general manager Richard Plugge and sporting manager Merijn Zeeman to offer the reaction of the team who dominated this year's Tour.
“It's a new type of parcours, not a traditional parcours. We haven't seen something like this for some years," Zeeman told Cyclingnews of a climbing-laced route that features just 22km of time trialling.
“We have a combination of what look like some easier mountain stages but also some extremely hard mountain stages like the one over the Roselend and Col de la Loze. That's a very hard stage. Also with the Vosges on the second-last day, that makes the last week the hardest part of the Tour."
As for the scarcity of time trialling, that might appear to be an issue for the team that boasts two of the top three GC riders against the clock, plus a specialist in Van Aert. But despite being a major talking point of the route as a whole, it wasn't a major issue for Zeeman.
“Our biggest opponent is [Tadej] Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and he's also a TT specialist, so that doesn't make much of a difference to us."
As for the general mood in the camp, Zeeman declined to colour Jumbo-Visma happy or disappointed but did suggest that the parcours lends itself to the strengths of Vingegaard, Roglic, and Van Aert.
“I just accept it. I don't want to judge it because it's something you cannot influence. That's how I see it," he said.
“With the leaders we have, with Roglic, with Vingegaard, with Van Aert, we can see on this parcours they will have the opportunity to make the difference.”
It was interesting that Zeeman name-checked all three of Jumbo-Vismo's headline riders, given the uncertainty that surrounds their leadership plans for 2023.
Vingegaard is almost certain to return to the Tour as the defending champion but there's a question mark over whether Roglic is tempted away by the Giro d’Iitalia's 70km of time trialling. Van Aert has even been linked with a visit to Italy, although that appears unlikely given his ambitions in the Classics, which lie just ahead of the Giro.
“That's all on the table. It's possible," Zeeman said. "I also want to hear their opinions, see how they feel, what they believe, how they're motivated.”
“We just finished our evaluations from this season, then we take that with us to plan the new season. It's a long process that takes many weeks and we're in the middle of that, so it's still too early to say.”
“We look to the biggest races in the world because we want to win the biggest races in the world. We'll look at our goals and how we can achieve them. There'll be a good plan with everyone behind it."
