{"id":303848,"date":"2025-07-30T12:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T12:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/303848\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T12:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T12:03:11","slug":"theyre-facing-a-phenomenon-like-only-happens-once-every-50-years-bakelants-analyses-visma-and-vingegaards-tour-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/303848\/","title":{"rendered":"“They’re facing a phenomenon like only happens once every 50 years\u201d \u2013 Bakelants analyses Visma and Vingegaard\u2019s Tour de France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wout van Aert delivered a dramatic conclusion to the 2025
\nTour de France<\/a> by dropping Tadej Pogacar and winning the final stage in Paris.
\nHis triumph offered a moment of celebration for Team Visma <\/a>| Lease a Bike, who
\nalso took a stage win through Simon Yates on stage 10 of the race. But the
\nteam’s ambitions for the general classification fell short, as they did in 2024.
\nJonas Vingegaard<\/a> never truly challenged Pogacar, who once again proved
\nunshakable over three weeks.”We don’t need to overdramatize it,” Jan Bakelants<\/a>
\nsaid in his review for Sporza. “Vingegaard is still the second-best rider
\nin this Tour. Many riders would sign up to be runner-up just once. You can
\nstill dream of turning things around. He needs to keep working hard, keep doing
\nwhat he’s doing.”<\/p>\n

Vingegaard’s chances were undone on two specific days: the
\nstage 5 time trial and the stage to Hautacam. Outside of those setbacks, the
\nDane held his ground, despite never troubling his Slovenian rival. Bakelants
\nbelieves those were decisive moments, but not necessarily ones the team could
\nhave planned around.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Not much, surprisingly enough,” he said when
\nasked what Visma could have done differently. “They’re facing a phenomenon
\nlike only happens once every 50 years. Or maybe even longer. They pulled out
\nall the stops, but it didn’t work out. I don’t think we would have gotten a
\ndifferent outcome if Visma | Lease a Bike had done anything differently.”<\/p>\n

There were still some reflections on how to improve, as
\nVisma seemed to spend a lot of energy before they even made it to the mountains.
\n“Perhaps a slightly better balance needs to be found between his
\nexplosiveness and long-term climbing ability,” Bakelants added. “And
\nperhaps they should hope that Pogacar suffers a setback at some point. In that
\nrespect, Vingegaard hasn’t been spared in recent years. That would explain part
\nof the gap.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wout van Aert delivered a dramatic conclusion to the 2025 Tour de France by dropping Tadej Pogacar and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-303848","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\/114942089842807653","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303848","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=303848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}