{"id":259760,"date":"2025-07-12T19:48:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T19:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/259760\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T19:48:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T19:48:16","slug":"i-dont-know-what-their-intention-was-war-of-words-breaks-out-between-tadej-pogacar-and-visma-lease-a-bike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/259760\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I don’t know what their intention was’ – war of words breaks out between Tadej Poga\u010dar and Visma-Lease a Bike"},"content":{"rendered":"

The gloves are not quite off, but tension is brewing: after six years of being amicable towards each other during their captivating Tour de France<\/a> tussle, Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates-XRG have now begun to trade verbal and physical blows.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the looming mountain tests that will determine the winner of this year\u2019s race, Tadej Poga\u010dar <\/a>has become visibly irritated with Visma\u2019s tactics in recent days, which seemed designed to put the Slovenian back into yellow, even though he might have preferred someone else to have it on the flatter transition days south.<\/p>\n

And then on stage seven, which Poga\u010dar won in M\u00fbr-de-Bretagne<\/a>, cameras spotted the world champion pushing Visma\u2019s second GC card Matteo Jorgenson during a feed zone.<\/p>\n

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The Slovenian appeared to do so because Jorgenson got in his way, meaning that the defending champion couldn\u2019t retrieve a bottle from a soigneur; Jorgenson, too, also failed to get a bidon.<\/p>\n

Speaking to ITV Sport ahead of the start of stage eight \u2013 a sleepy day through western France eventually won by Lidl-Trek\u2019s Jonathan Milan<\/a> \u2013 Jorgenson smiled when asked about the incident. \u201cI don\u2019t need to comment on that,\u201d he said. \u201cI missed a bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar, however, was far more happy to discuss what happened. \u201cThere was a feed zone and we were riding in one line, and I showed an intention to go for a bottle,\u201d he said. \u201cMy soigneur was about 20 metres after Visma. But they decided to pass us on the right side.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if I wanted to take a bottle, I could not do anything else but give him a little bit of a push, so I could get my bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n

Pogacar shoves Matteo through the feed zone, causing him to miss a bottle. No penalty tho bc it didn\u2019t cause a crash \ud83e\udd74 #tdf25<\/p>\n

\u2014 @kris.to (@kris.to.bsky.social<\/a>) 2025-07-12T16:33:57.494Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Expanding further, Poga\u010dar suggested that Visma have form for cutting riders up at bottle collection points. \u201cFor me, it was normal \u2013 but I don\u2019t know what their intention was,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey do this a lot of times, coming in front of you in feed zones like they\u2019re the only ones having bottles there.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you have to be patient and stay on the wheel when taking a bottle and pay respect to everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

After stage eight, Visma\u2019s lead sports director Grischa Niermann was told about Poga\u010dar\u2019s comments that there needed to be more respect in the peloton. \u201cThe same back to him,\u201d Niermann smirked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a normal incident,\u201d he went on. \u201cMatteo wanted to take a bottle and Tadej also wanted to take one.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe we should tell our soigneurs to stand a little bit further apart from each other. Like this [both teams\u2019 soigneurs positioned closely together] they both didn\u2019t get a bottle because Matteo also missed his, so that\u2019s a pity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the grand scheme of things, it\u2019s only a minor skirmish, but it does add a level of intrigue to the battle as the race hots up. Will mind games ultimately settle round six of the UAE-Visma contest?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gloves are not quite off, but tension is brewing: after six years of being amicable towards each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-259760","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\/114841996759091003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259760","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=259760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}