Jonas Vingegaard is the adult in the room as the top three finishers of the Tour de France give their traditional podium press conferences.
Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), still decidedly boyish at only 24 in his first Tour, sits quietly on a plastic chair, giving the air of a school child, waiting patiently to speak to the press about the biggest result of his nascent career.
Tadej Pogačar, the winner, comes in and sees that he is still third in the queue for his moment. He huffs and puffs and waves his arms in frustration, enough to get him bumped up to next in line, despite the fact that Lipowitz has already been waiting.
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But Vingegaard, now 28, an experienced rider and an experienced human being, just sits on stage calmly and serenely. He waits quietly whilst his Visma-Lease a Bike teammate, Wout van Aert – who won the final stage in Paris – breaks down his thrilling day on the cobbles. Vingegaard takes in the room, studies the journalists’ faces, and listens to his friend speak.
The reason Vingegaard is here is that he’s just finished second in the Tour de France, for the second year in a row. It’s his biggest – practically only – goal of the year, and all the two-time winner wants to do is win again. But he hasn’t. He’s lost out. He settles for the second step of the podium. Again.
For a rider who has focused so much of their career on this race, built their whole existence around it, and come up with a 2-3 defeat against Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), it would be natural to be disappointed. Sad, frustrated, angry even.
But that’s not what Vingegaard exudes, not what he has ever exuded over these last three weeks, as time and time again Pogačar beat him, and time and time again his team’s very best efforts came up short.
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The Dane stayed faithful right until the very end, with his team thinking as late as the evening of stage 18 that they could turn around his four-and-a-half-minute deficit on Pogačar, but the tide change never came. However, as stage 21 wraps up, and there’s finally no more days to think about how you can still win the Tour, Vingegaard is simply accepting.
Most of this surely comes down to the fact that his defeat was not exceptional, but rather mundane, routine. There was no big blow up, no fatal mistake, not even really many particularly insane gains from Pogačar. He just had some good days, some bad days, and that was it. Not enough for the win, but nothing to be done about it.
Whilst Vingegaard has stayed resilient throughout the Tour, speaking on Sunday evening, he did open up about the fact that his form was up and down over the last three weeks.
“On some stages I’ve had the highest level, I think also on other stages I’ve had the lowest level for many years for me,” he says, likely referencing some of the punchy days in the first week, or the day to Hautacam where he shipped a minute to Pogačar.
He is not bullish enough to say that he had an amazing Tour and was still beaten, nor to try and make excuses.
“That was a bit more just a few bad days, to be honest, so it was some kind of confirmation that I am better than I have ever been, but also it’s shown that also I can have a few bad days.”
There’s no frustration in his words, no upset, just truth. Life is made up of good days and bad days, for Vingegaard the rider and Vingegaard the person.
The only point at which Vingegaard’s calm, mature exterior ever seemed at risk of wobbling was when his wife made headlines at the start of the race for some comments she had made about the team, and how they approach their – and her husband’s – goals.
For a rider who so rarely makes any waves with the things he says, which are always considered and professional, the news was grasped at as some unusual drama around the Dane. But it didn’t faze him then, and it doesn’t when it comes up again on Sunday evening.
“I don’t think it affected anything to be honest,” he answers when asked if that perhaps influenced his race.. “We rode as we wanted to ride, so we didn’t change anything.”
Looking ahead
More of Vingegaard’s maturity and serene focus shine through in the fact that, even moments after the Tour, he is already aware of what he is to do next. Lipowitz wants to spend a few days in Paris with his girlfriend. Pogačar is itching to leave so he can celebrate with his team, “the boys”, as he’d put it.
Vingegaard, however, is already thinking about the Vuelta a España, where he’ll head next month to seek a first Grand Tour title in two years. A win there wouldn’t make up for a loss in the Tour, but it remains a goal, and the direction of the next part of his season.
“First I will do about a week more or less easy, and from there you can start training again, or so to say,” he says. “It’s more just when you feel fresh and able to train again to be honest. And then from there it’s just basically two and a half weeks of training and then the Vuelta is coming already.
“So there’s not a lot of time, but I did it already two years ago, and for me back then it worked out pretty well. So hopefully again this year.”
After the Vuelta, Vingegaard will head to the World Championships, and then his season is unknown, but more than likely, the preparation will already begin for the Tour next year. With Pogačar’s domination of the French race, there is some feeling that perhaps Vingegaard – as other riders have and do – might skip the Tour one year to focus on the Giro instead, where he may not face the world champion, but there’s no rush to commit to that one way or another, nor vow that he will only ever focus on the Tour.
“I’ve always said that I also would like to do the Giro once,” Vingegaard says. “I’m not sitting here and saying that I’ll do the Giro next year, but it’s something that we have to discuss with the team, what our goals will be next year. As I said, I always wanted to do it as well, so we’ll just have to make our plans for next year and see what they will be.”
Whatever those plans may be, and wherever we see Vingegaard next year, we can expect to be greeted with the same kind of rider: motivated, ambitious, strong, and realistic. Never rocking the boat, rarely complaining, just sticking to his plan, and seeing what the result is in the end.
Maybe the winner, maybe not, but always accepting of whatever way things turn out.
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