When fish factory worker turned cyclist Jonas Vingegaard signed with Jumbo-Visma in 2019 no other team was interested in the man who is now on course to win this year’s Tour de France.
As a teenager, Vingegaard balanced racing with 4am starts at a port in Hanstholm, Denmark, where his tasks included taking orders for sole and cod.
By the sea was a preferable place to be on Tuesday when the peloton resumed racing and commenced the third and final week of the Tour, in which the 2022 champion will be decided.
The Tour last year felt unseasonably cold and wet but searing temperatures this month have seen race organiser ASO adopt measures to make the heat more manageable.
Loading
A truck carrying 10,000 litres of water went ahead of the bunch on a stage last week to wet the road in parts of the course, reducing surface temperatures and the risk of a sticky tarmac and melting bike tyres.
Riders have worn ice vests at stage starts and finishes, and Ineos Grenadiers brought an inflatable ice bath. Even the nation’s vast sunflower fields look sad, wilting in oppressive conditions like most of the snow on the once white-capped Alps, which have turned rocky, brown and barren.
The Tour peloton delved deeper into the green Pyrenees, embracing a cool change, on Wednesday, but Vingegaard proved he could handle the literal and figurative heat.
He has led the race since assuming the yellow leader’s jersey from Tadej Pogačar on stage 11 in the Alps where he celebrated a solo victory and proved the two-time and defending champion, who cracked on the Col du Granon summit finish, is fallible.
Vingegaard had to leave Denmark’s typically flat landscape to discover he was an adept climber and, in only his career second Tour, is not a fish out of water.
In the Alps, Jumbo-Visma had power in numbers, weakening the undermanned Pogačar on the penultimate climb, the Col du Galibier, in a tactical masterclass months in the making.
In the Pyrenees, where Pogačar is down to only three teammates following a spate of COVID-19 positive tests, illness and injury, Vingegaard remains in control, able to follow attacks from his plucky rival.
The fight is now less about numbers and more a man-to-man battle for the title.
Pogačar took his third scalp of this Tour, winning stage 17 on Wednesday when he pipped Vingegaard in a two-up sprint on the summit finish at Peyragudes.
Loading
Ironically, it was he who still had a teammate with him, Brandon McNulty, inside the final 10 kilometres of the 129.7km test. McNulty, who is not usually Pogačar’s last man, set the pace up until about the final 550m.
Pogačar clawed back only four seconds on Vingegaard in the overall standings, but plans to exploit any vulnerability the yellow jersey has in the last mountain stage to Hautacam on Thursday.
“His plan is to be really strong and not to crack, but I think that if today I had Rafal Majka with me, or [Marc] Soler or George Bennett,” Pogačar said of his teammates who had withdrawn, “with Brandon and Mikkel [Bjerg] and everyone we could have made a harder race and maybe already cracked Jonas before.
When Jumbo-Visma sports director Merijn Zeeman signed Vingegaard ahead of the 2019 season he said the Dane was incredibly happy he could turn pro.
“There was no other team who wanted to offer him [a contract], there was not even interest, so I think we did a very good job in recruiting him,” Zeeman said.
“He was really down to earth, motivated and always a good guy to work with, very open to the coaches. He listens very well and he learns very well.”
Loading
Vingegaard’s former occupation is a world away from the privileged, sometimes precious and insulated professional sports industry, but Zeeman believes he is stronger for the experience.
Physiologically, the 25-year-old has all the attributes of a Tour de France contender. He is very lithe, can climb, obviously, and time trial.
However, competing for the yellow jersey is also a mental battle, especially in the third week when fatigue peaks and the end of the 3,328km race seems so close but so far.
“As a personality,” Zeeman said, “he was working at the port to pack in all the fish.
“I really believe when you have a background like that [where] you have to get up at four o’clock in the morning, you have to work six, seven hours and then you go on the bike, the moment you turn pro it gives you an advantage.
“The life of a pro is obviously a hard life, but it can also be harder like it was before with him.”
Vingegaard has provided titbits into his personality. He got emotional when he received the warmest welcome at the teams’ presentation in Copenhagen, where the Tour began. And he had barely started his cool-down after his stage win when he was on the phone to his girlfriend, who he has referenced regularly.
“The support she gives me, the support my daughter gives me, it’s incredible,” he said.
Vingegaard comes across as reserved, at least in comparison to Pogačar, the once small, shy boy with a big engine who catapulted to the top of the sport and developed “star” status.
Pogačar seems to be friends with everyone, congratulating rivals for their stage victories on camera, tapping the backsides of teammates as he rides past to say job well done like a footballer does, and engaging in witty repertoire with press on social media.
Vingegaard is less boisterous perhaps because of how he has arrived at this point, and maybe because Jumbo-Visma has been in this position before, only to lose the maillot jaune at the 11th hour.
In some ways Vingegaard, you could argue, is underrated for his standing.
He made his Tour debut last season as a substitute for Dutch champion Tom Dumoulin, employed to support Primoz Roglic in his title bid. Roglic abandoned it due to crash-related injuries. Vingegaard went on to finish second overall to Pogačar.
Despite that result, he returned to the Tour this year as a co-leader alongside Roglic, who abandoned last week, again due to crash-related injuries, and with a split team.
UAE Team Emirates built its squad entirely around Pogačar whereas Jumbo-Visma entered with a varied eight-man roster. Not only did it have two title contenders but also Belgian titan Wout van Aert, who has won two stages, marked a stint in the yellow jersey, and is leading the points classification.
“It’s of course difficult to combine his ambitions, especially because I think in a Tour de France like this I found a lot of stages which would suit me personally as well, but we made a good plan for this before the Tour,” van Aert said.
“It’s also because the rest of the team is so strong that I can have some freedom now and then to go for the stage win and even [have] the support of Christophe [Lapport] in the bunch sprints. It’s all about [a] super-strong team.”
Loading
Van Aert on stage 11 interrupted Vingegaard’s first post-race interview with a broad smile, congratulating his teammate who he says has become more confident.
“He had to grow in that, but he’s been super confident the last season actually,” van Aert said.
“Since he got second in the Tour last year he gained a lot of confidence, in my feeling.
Vingegaard holds a 2-minute and 18-second advantage over Pogačar and 4 minutes and 56 seconds on Thomas ahead of stage 18. It’s a healthy margin but one he’s not daring to entertain.
When the ABC asked on Wednesday if he realistically thought Pogačar could make that time up before the finale in Paris on Sunday, the question fell flat.
“I guess we’ll see in Paris. It’s hard to tell. I don’t know. We will see in Paris,” he said.
التعليقات