{"id":231424,"date":"2025-07-02T07:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/231424\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T07:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:33:10","slug":"its-boring-anyway-mart-smeets-takes-aim-at-jonas-vingegaard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/231424\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;It&#8217;s boring anyway\u201d &#8211; Mart Smeets takes aim at Jonas Vingegaard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>His words were harsh, especially given Vingegaard\u2019s track<br \/>\nrecord. The Dane claimed back-to-back Tour titles in 2022 and 2023, only losing<br \/>\nout to <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/tadej-pogacar\" title=\"Tadej Pogacar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tadej Pogacar<\/a> in 2024 after a build up disrupted by injury. Without<br \/>\nVingegaard in the mix, Pogacar could well have been chasing a sixth consecutive<br \/>\nyellow jersey this summer.<\/p>\n<p>Smeets went even further, questioning the significance of<br \/>\nnearly the entire Tour peloton. &#8220;There are 176 starting this year. That<br \/>\nmeans that 170 men have absolutely no business being there. Just riding along<br \/>\nand bringing a little water.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His words were harsh, especially given Vingegaard\u2019s track record. The Dane claimed back-to-back Tour titles in 2022 and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-231424","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\/114782483473801024","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231424","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=231424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}