Jonas Vingegaard tried everything to get Tadej Pogacar out of the concept on the 16th stage of the Tour de France. The Danes succeeded, only he even surprised his own teammates with his first attack.
It was clear that Jonas Vingegaard and his team had planned a lot for the climb to the Ventoux summit before it went uphill. Visma placed two “satellites” in front of the field early in the race. In the Peloton itself, the team literally banged into the climb. It was the harbinger of what should follow a little later.
Vingegaard set his first of three attacks almost eight kilometers before the finish. So actually much too early. At least this early start was not planned in advance.
“Originally we wanted to try to get to the summit except for 1.5 kilometers because it gets steeper again. But Jonas told me that he wanted to attack earlier so that Tadej could not recover,” said Victor Campenaert in the “Sporza” interview that his boss changed the attack plan.
Vingegaard and Visma “have nothing to lose”
“Of course we wanted to put Pogacar under pressure. It was good that we had two people in the outlier group,” said Tiesj Benoot, who was one of these two outliers. “It was a great advantage to have a teammate. We successfully implemented this part of the plan,” he said.
Sepp Kuss in turn explained that this offensive tactic was ultimately the result of the overall ranking. “Somehow it’s a very nice and interesting position, because there is already a decent distance [zwischen Vingegaard und Pogacar] And we have nothing to lose if we try. We can really go down with waving flags and try it at every moment, “said the American.
“When Jonas feels good …”
Vingegaard now doesn’t matter whether he loses more time on Pogacar or even a place in the classification, said Kuss.
“We don’t even know exactly where we will attack, but at least we do it with the attitude that we have nothing to lose. That motivates us to give everything and nothing to regret at the end of the tour.”
Video: Tour highlights: Irres finish on Mont Ventoux
Ultimately, the main thing is to “have fun”, emphasized Kuss. “And if Jonas feels good, we can do a lot of interesting things.”