The 1996 Tour de France winner and team director Bjarne Riis has delivered a broadside of criticisms of Visma-Lease a Bike's tactics in stage six in this year's race.
Jonas Vingegaard's squad rode aggressively during the very hilly, long stage from Bayeaux to Vire Normandie. First they tried to put Wout van Aert in the break early on, finally succeeding with teammate and 2025 Giro d'Italia winner Simon Yates. They then worked hard in the bunch, presumably to try and keep arch-rival Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), the leader after stage 5's time trial, from 'loaning' the yellow to Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
For those curious about why Pogačar may have been eager to shed the yellow jersey, you can read our explainer here.
Visma's efforts to keep Van der Poel out of yellow failed, albeit only by one second, whilst Yates was powerless to stop Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) from breaking away 40 kilometres from the finish - although in the Briton's defense, all the other riders in the eight-man move, barring Healy himself, of course would have to say the same.
Riis, in any case, was not convinced by Visma's tactics, writing in his regular column for B.T. that "I simply don't understand it. Why is Visma racing the way they are today [Thursday]? It ends up with a lot of wasted effort."
"In my opinion, they don't do much right – and almost everything wrong."
Riis began by criticising Van Aert for "riding almost like an amateur. He rides off headlong instead of waiting for the right breakaway to happen.
"I would have stopped it right away. It makes absolutely no sense to me to ride so aggressively from kilometre 0, when the whole peloton wants to break away."
The only other Danish winner of the Tour de France, Riis then moved on to say he agreed with Vingegaard's wife, Trine Hansen, who recently criticised Visma in an interview with Politiken, about how the squad should focus more on their leader. He also argued that a later breakaway, Simon Yates was not racing for the stage win "and now he's spent a lot of energy."
"Of course, I agree that it's always good for a team to win a stage," he told B.T.
"But from now on, Visma must focus on riding strategically so that Jonas can make up for lost time."
Riis also had some milder criticism regarding Vingegaard, saying that he would have takes some gambles to shift the race back in his favour.
However, he added, "That kind of thing could have explained many of Visma's moves, but Jonas didn't even move – and then I'm looking at an even bigger question mark.
"Vingegaard shouldn't be afraid to take risks. In the pursuit of picking up minutes, he should be willing to lose seconds here and there.
"Of course, he should take some risks along the way. He just didn't do that on Thursday, and he's wearing his team down instead."
Top race favourite Pogačar was also baffled by the Dutch team's tactics, reportedly calling them 'Rubbish' on Slovenian radio. He added elsewhere, "Visma tried to do, I don't know what… They went hard, so we just followed them. They came up on the last two kickers, riding all out"
"Maybe they had info that Mathieu van der Poel was suffering and losing time up front. Perhaps Visma wanted to give me the yellow jersey today. But Mathieu has it by one second, so chapeau to him."
Visma strike back
Visma-Lease a Bike were unafraid to hit back at Pogačar's criticisms, with race director Grischa Niermann telling Sporza on Friday: "What was the plan? "It's a good thing he [Pogačar] doesn't get it.
"We're following our own tactics and did exactly what we wanted. Period."
It's also true that Visma have come in for high praise in the first two days of the race for using the crosswinds to gain time on rivals like Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Primoz Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) then tearing the peloton to shreds on stage 2 in the northern coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
However, the debate on their tactics in western France a little later in the week, seemingly remains much more open. Van Aert, meanwhile, was back on the attack right from the start of stage 7.
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