{"id":194329,"date":"2025-06-18T12:02:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T12:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/194329\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T12:02:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T12:02:15","slug":"dont-write-jonas-vingegaard-off-he-still-has-time-to-get-ahead-of-tadej-pogacar-before-the-tour-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/194329\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t write Jonas Vingegaard off, he still has time to get ahead of Tadej Poga\u010dar before the Tour de France"},"content":{"rendered":"

It would be easy to cast your eye over the final general classification at the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9<\/a> and make the assumption that the Tour de France<\/a> is over before it has even got underway, the yellow jersey is already won. Most of us have long since run out of superlatives to describe Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a>, with last week\u2019s race only further confirmation of his ability.<\/p>\n

This wasn’t just your run of the mill Poga\u010dar whitewash, this was the Slovenian putting in a big performance; landing a huge psychological blow against his main rival, Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>, with the Grand D\u00e9part approaching.<\/p>\n

Marc Madiot – general manager at Groupama-FDJ – didn\u2019t hold back when he reflected on the current world champion\u2019s display: “He’s hammering the nail into Vingegaard’s head. Poga\u010dar has killed him mentally,” he told RMC<\/a> during the race. “Look at Vingegaard’s face on Saturday\u2026 Poga\u010dar crushed him.”<\/p>\n

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The suggestion that Poga\u010dar eventually “crushed” his opponent is probably not over-egging it – three stage wins and taking the overall win by almost a minute accurately fits that description, but the Tour is still three weeks away and there is plenty of time yet for the tables to turn.<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/p>\n

This piece is part of\u00a0The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this delivered to your inbox,\u00a0subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While he will undoubtedly be disheartened by the end result, Vingegaard will now travel to Tignes for a final altitude camp safe in the knowledge that the harsh truths revealed can easily become a distant memory by the time Mont Ventoux arrives in the Tour’s third week.<\/p>\n

For a start, he will head to Lille with a solid supporting cast, on paper. The Dane can call on the likes of Giro d\u2019Italia winner Simon Yates<\/a> and a clearly in-form Wout van Aert<\/a> for support when it’s needed. Whereas if the provisional start list is to be believed, Poga\u010dar is set to be without his key lieutenant, Rafa\u0142 Majka, although there are many other solid supporting riders for UAE Team Emirates-XRG.<\/p>\n

Visma-Lease a Bike will know they can capitalise on their strength in depth, particularly during the altitude heavy final week of racing, and they will be buoyed by the way in which they shed most of Poga\u010dar’s teammates ahead of the final climb last Saturday. A small win to some, particularly given the end result, but the Dutch team won’t see it that way.<\/p>\n

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The team used its superior firepower to great aplomb on the road to the Col du Granon in 2022<\/a>, a day Poga\u010dar won\u2019t have forgotten in a hurry. Matteo Jorgenson, two-time winner of Paris-Nice<\/a>, will also line up alongside the Visma team leader, along with the American Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/a> winner and super domestique, Sepp Kuss.<\/p>\n

Vingegaard can also rest safe in the knowledge that he was evidently better than Poga\u010dar in the Dauphin\u00e9 time trial. His performance meant that the man in the rainbow bands had work to do and time to make up, even if it was just 38 seconds.<\/p>\n

With a time trial coming early on in the Tour de France, Vingegaard could yet strike his own psychological blow over the Slovenian in Caen, with the Tour just five days in, before the mountains and chances to repeatedly isolate his opponent have even arrived.<\/p>\n

“If we’re realistic and objective,” Madiot added, continuing his assessment of the duo, “there’s no contest at the moment.” That may seem true if you sit back and assess the situation, particularly if you’re comparing results in 2025 alone.<\/p>\n

But yet there are still six weeks to go before the race reaches Paris, and plenty of kilometres to tick past before the winner has been decided. It’s still all to play for at this year’s Tour de France and Jonas Vingegaard and Visma-Lease a Bike cannot be written off just yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would be easy to cast your eye over the final general classification at the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-194329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114704269214782340","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}