On stage 15, Jonas Vingegaard went down early in the day and was caught out behind a split alongside most other GC riders. Whilst it didn’t look like a dramatic race situation, Tadej Pogacar’s presence in front and latter comments on not understand Team Visma | Lease a Bike’s tactics have led to unpleased responses from Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert. Team DS Grischa Niermann takes responsibilities for the misunderstanding, and explains why the Dutch team maintained three riders in front at that moment. “It’s clear that we came here with one big goal, and that’s the general classification with Jonas Vingegaard. But we also always come to the Tour de France with different objectives, like aiming for stage wins. That’s what we did yesterday,” Niermann explained to the media in a press conference this morning. It was rather clear that the stage would have a winner from a breakaway, and with the race not stopping in front, pulling the riders back would likely sacrifice the team’s chances of succeeding.
“You’re probably referring to what happened at the start of the stage. That was my responsibility. I analyzed the situation, and I was sure that the big group with Jonas would come back easily, without any problems. That’s how I perceived the race at that moment, from the car. I decided that the guys in front had to stay at the front. Obviously, my analysis would have changed if the group behind lost time, and in that case, we would have dropped all the guys back down.”
Ultimately those minutes had no influence in the outcome of the stage or the overall classification, but it were Pogacar’s comments that struck after the stage, claiming Vingegaard might not be happy at the dinner table later tonight, and somewhat appearing to be trying to spark some of the team’s riders against each other. Most likely that will now be water under the bridge, although tension between the two teams does exist – at the end of the day, there is a Tour de France victory on the line.
But how do Visma turn the race around, against such a strong opponent? “We’ll have to make a decision, of course. There’s a four-minute gap to make up, so an attack 500 meters from the finish in the high mountains won’t be enough. There must be a weakness in Tadej somewhere. For now, we haven’t found it, but we’ll keep trying. There are a few big stages left, and we’ll try to get there. The Tour doesn’t finish until Paris”.