Wout van Aert delivered a dramatic conclusion to the 2025
Tour de France by dropping Tadej Pogacar and winning the final stage in Paris.
His triumph offered a moment of celebration for Team Visma | Lease a Bike, who
also took a stage win through Simon Yates on stage 10 of the race. But the
team’s ambitions for the general classification fell short, as they did in 2024.
Jonas Vingegaard never truly challenged Pogacar, who once again proved
unshakable over three weeks.”We don’t need to overdramatize it,” Jan Bakelants
said in his review for Sporza. “Vingegaard is still the second-best rider
in this Tour. Many riders would sign up to be runner-up just once. You can
still dream of turning things around. He needs to keep working hard, keep doing
what he’s doing.”
Vingegaard’s chances were undone on two specific days: the
stage 5 time trial and the stage to Hautacam. Outside of those setbacks, the
Dane held his ground, despite never troubling his Slovenian rival. Bakelants
believes those were decisive moments, but not necessarily ones the team could
have planned around.
“Not much, surprisingly enough,” he said when
asked what Visma could have done differently. “They’re facing a phenomenon
like only happens once every 50 years. Or maybe even longer. They pulled out
all the stops, but it didn’t work out. I don’t think we would have gotten a
different outcome if Visma | Lease a Bike had done anything differently.”
There were still some reflections on how to improve, as
Visma seemed to spend a lot of energy before they even made it to the mountains.
“Perhaps a slightly better balance needs to be found between his
explosiveness and long-term climbing ability,” Bakelants added. “And
perhaps they should hope that Pogacar suffers a setback at some point. In that
respect, Vingegaard hasn’t been spared in recent years. That would explain part
of the gap.”