Visma-Lease a Bike and Jonas Vingegaard may be just one day into this year's Tour de France, with the yellow jersey already on the Dane's back, but at the start of stage 2 on Sunday, they showed they're not taking any chances with his health.
Vingegaard triumphed at his previous two Grand Tour outings, last year's Vuelta a España and the Giro d'Italia in May. He did, however, battle illnesses during both races, with a throat issue and cough affecting him in Spain, while he caught a cold in Italy.
On Sunday, he rocked up to the stage start in Tarragona wearing a face mask. The spectre of COVID-19 and mandatory masking may be long behind us in Europe, but clearly, the two-time Tour winner is taking every precaution to stave off any maladies in France.
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"There's a few things behind it. It's not that I have any problem," Vingegaard said before the start of the 168.5km stage to the hilly Montjuïc Park circuit in Barcelona.
"It's more that I hear already that there's some sickness in some teams and I've had a history of being sick in my last two Grand Tours, so as you said: 'Better safe than sorry.'"
Visma-Lease a Bike have, of course, already been struck by illness and injury in the lead-up to the Tour. Key support riders Christophe Laporte and Wout van Aert were both ruled out of taking part, with Laporte suffering a quadriceps tear in a May training crash, and Van Aert injuring an elbow in training last month.
Italian rider Edoardo Affini was almost a late scratch from the Visma selection, too. He crashed at the Italian National Time Trial Championships, but avoided major injury and started the Tour.
He was part of the successful Visma effort in Saturday's team time trial, which saw the team take home the opening stage victory as Vingegaard stormed into the yellow jersey, eight seconds ahead of Filippo Ganna and 12 up on his great Tour rival, Tadej Pogačar.
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