For example, Vingegaard crashed on March 13, injuring his wrist and sustaining a concussion. Six weeks later, the team announced that he had fully recovered from his injuries and had resumed preparing for the battle against arch-nemesis Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates–XRG) in the Tour.
“The specific build-up to the Tour de France for Jonas started this week with a wind tunnel test in Aalborg, Denmark,” the team’s statement read at the time. “Soon, the Danish rider from Team Visma | Lease a Bike will head to Sierra Nevada for high-altitude training with the team. This will be followed by the Critérium du Dauphiné. After that race, there will be another altitude training camp in Tignes as the final preparation for the big goal in France.”
Because his injuries also forced him to skip the Volta a Catalunya, the 28-year-old Dane will go into the Tour with only two complete stage races under his belt, the Volta ao Algarve in mid-February, which he won, and the Dauphiné. Which also means that he will have raced in only two individual time trials before the Tour, since Paris-Nice offered only a team time trial, which Visma won. Is that enough to match the defending Tour champion? Pogačar had a very busy and successful spring, finishing on the podium of all four Monuments he rode, winning two of them in addition to winning two Classics.
In any case, Vingegaard recently carried out recons of some key Tour climbs in the Pyrenees, the Col du Soulor and Hautacam, which come on stage 12, and the Col de Peyresourde, which is part of the daunting – and perhaps decisive – stage 14 with the Col du Tourmalet, Col d’Aspin and the summit finish at Luchon Superbagnères.
Altitude camp is fine, but there is no better training than real racing. But the Visma staff is confident. “We know that this approach works for him. Some people will say that racing less is a risk, but it has already worked for us,” Vingegaard’s coach Tim Heemskerg said in an interview with Velo. “We understand that people would rather see him racing more for the Tour de France, but we are making a plan that gives us a bigger chance in the most important period, which means the most to Jonas and all of us.”
Vingegaard suffered far more severe injuries last year in the Itzulia Basque Country in April and did not race again before the Tour but managed a very impressive second place behind Pogačar. Impressive yes, but second place. Heemskerg no doubt also remembers that Pogačar crashed out of Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2023, had minimal racing before the Tour and finished . . . second to Vingegaard.
And what’s with Wout van Aert, who is scheduled to ride in both the Giro and the Tour this year? He said early this year that he was targeting the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. But what did he mean by targeting? If he meant finishing fourth, then it was a success. He couldn’t have meant that he wanted to win them –or most of the spring Classics he rode in – because it didn’t seem like he was trying to win them. Of the numerous sprints against rivals he was involved in, he didn’t seem to be going into the red in most of thrm.
To my eye, he only sprinted hard in two of those races, Dwars door Vlaanderen, which he clearly wanted to win but was beaten by Neilson Powless (EF Education– EasyPost), and the Amstel Gold Race, in which he never tried to stay close to the contenders and won the bunch sprint for… fourth place, 34 seconds behind the winner. Was he only using the spring Classics to prepare for his double-Grand Tour duty, where he will presumably go for stage wins and green jerseys and help Vingegaard win the Tour? That’s what it looked like to me. But who knows?
And, finally, what about Vingegaard’s other support riders, the likes of Sepp Kuss, Christophe Laporte, Dylan van Baarle and Matteo Jorgenson. Jorgenson won Paris-Nice and rode in a few Classics, looking strong. He will ride in the Dauphiné and the Tour, where he will be invaluable, especially if he improves his climbing skills just a little. Tiesj Benoot has looked very good this spring in the service of van Aert and will be one of the keys to Vingegaard’s Tour success.
As for Kuss, Vingegaard’s main support rider in the mountains the past few years has been invisible this spring and did not even finish the Itzulia Basque Country. There is no information about why he abandoned, but he finished far down in every preceding stage, looking like a shadow of his former self. He has not been seen since and is not scheduled to race until the Tour.
Laporte has been ill all year with a virus infection and has not raced since October. He is also penciled in for the Tour and nothing else. The team’s prestigious new acquisition, Simon Yates, will be riding in both the Giro, where he will presumably go for the GC, and the Tour, where he will probably replace the irreplaceable – and now rival – Primož Roglič (Bull–BORA–Hansgrohe). He had a less than impressive spring and remains an unknown quantity.
The sturdy Victor Campenaerts crashed in the Itzulia and broke his scapula. The team’s excellent sprinter Olav Kooij broke his collarbone in Gent-Wevelgem and remains out. There has been no concrete news about any of the riders, but there’s definitely a sense that Visma–Lease a Bike will be going into the Tour de France with their fingers crossed. While Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates looks stable and at least as strong as in the past, Visma will need to have all the questions about its riders’ health and preparedness answered positively. The mystery deepens.
