Jonas Vingegaard stunned everyone with his reward. “I’ll eat a Dürüm,” said the slight Dane and grinned. However, Vingegaard only wants to treat himself to the filled flatbread roll after returning from the Tour de France to Glingøre, his home in northern Jutland.
Before that, there should be at least one glass or two for white wine lovers in Paris. With a lead of 7:29 minutes on Tadej Pogacar, the Tour d’Honneur for the second Tour victory on the Champs-Élysées started.
Vingegaard repeated last year’s victory
Vingegaard easily fended off the last desperate attack by his Slovenian rival on Saturday in the Vosges. He was happy to leave the victory of the day to him. Shortly after crossing the finish line, Trine’s cell phone rang, Crown Prince Frederik was on the line. “He told her that he congratulated me and that he was very impressed that I had won the Tour twice in a row. He was very happy,” revealed Vingegaard.
It was a tough struggle until this luck, for a long time the Dane and Pogacar were only a few seconds apart. “This year it was an incredible fight between me and Tadej. It was really hard to break it,” said Vingegaard. The rivalry between the two will shape the next few years and provide cycling with great duels.
Vingegaard has the momentum. Last year he had outpaced Pogacar by 2:43 minutes, this year his rival experienced the biggest slump of his career on stage 17, losing almost six minutes on the toughest part of the tour. “I cracked myself. Nobody else. That was me,” said Pogacar about his “worst performance of all”. In addition, the Slovenian was impaired by a fractured scaphoid in the spring and was unable to prepare properly for the tour.
On the other hand, things went 100 percent according to plan at Vingegaard. High-altitude training camps on Tenerife, in the Sierra Nevada and in Tignes were occasionally interrupted by races. “This year I will not be at home with my family for 150 days. You have to make a lot of sacrifices to win races,” said Vingegaard. In contrast to last year, neither illness nor injury slowed him down.
Vingegaard: “I learned how to deal with pressure”
So the best Vingegaard in history came to the tour and particularly amazed with the incredible individual time trial at the foot of Mont Blanc. Doubts arose reflexively, the past of cycling is omnipresent. He can understand the skeptics, said Vingegaard. He even welcomes it when his performance is questioned. But he doesn’t take anything that he wouldn’t give to his daughter Frida.
“I’m getting a little better every year. It’s not like I’m 20 percent better in a year. It’s always small steps,” said Vingegaard. This year he’s been working on his explosiveness, which was definitely showing. It was also a mental struggle for the 1.75 meter tall man from the Danish North Sea to become the winner: “Two years ago I only started delivering results. Before that I couldn’t handle the pressure I put on myself. I learned to deal with it.”
However, what he still doesn’t quite like is the spotlight. He will be in that again when he returns to Denmark. On Wednesday he will be given another big reception in Copenhagen. From the airport he drives in a convertible to the town hall square, where tens of thousands received him last year. A day later we continue to Glingøre. Incidentally, they were so sure of victory there that they began planning the reception in January. It is not known whether Dürüm will also be served.