{"id":205899,"date":"2026-07-20T14:36:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T14:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=205899"},"modified":"2026-07-20T14:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T14:36:26","slug":"vingegaard-out-of-the-tour-you-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2026\/07\/20\/vingegaard-out-of-the-tour-you-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Vingegaard Out of the Tour: \u201cYou Don’t Know What You’ve Got ’til It’s Gone\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The moment the television camera showed Jonas Vingegaard getting into an ambulance after his crash on Sunday’s stage 15, an odd feeling came over me: the feeling that the spectacle I was watching, the Tour de France, had suddenly, and brutally, changed. And I realised that, though he hadn’t won the Tour since 2023, and probably would never beat his eternal nemesis, Tadej Poga\u010dar, again, something essential had been taken from the race \u2013 and even from Poga\u010dar himself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s really, really sad to see that Jonas is out,\u201d Poga\u010dar said<\/a>. \u201cSince 2021, we were always battling out for the victory. Maybe at the beginning, we didn’t have the best relationship, but in the last two years, we became good, respected rivals, competitors, but I also think friends. The Tour will not be the same without him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The odd couple of the Tour<\/strong><\/h2>\n

One of the reasons the Tour will not be the same is that Poga\u010dar and Vingegaard have been<\/em> the Tour de France since 2021, a show business duet every bit as iconic and inseparable as Sonny and Cher, Simon and Garfunkel, Batman and Robin. Yes, Poga\u010dar came to dominate the relationship, but his domination in the Tour was always measured by how much he won or lost vis-\u00e0-vis Jonas Vingegaard.<\/p>\n

And vice versa, of course. Vingegaard’s performances \u2013 or his chances of winning \u2013 were always defined by Poga\u010dar. Other than each other, they had no rivals. When one of them won, the other finished second. Their talents and performances tied them together like Siamese twins. They were a couple, and they brought each other to the dance that is the Tour and danced almost always only with each other.<\/p>\n

But they were an odd couple: the ebullient, fun-loving Poga\u010dar, and the reserved family man that is Vingegaard. It’s easy to believe that, as the Slovenian said, their beginnings as a couple were difficult. Just compare how they celebrate their victories: Vingegaard kisses his wedding ring before crossing the line; Poga\u010dar celebrates himself. That difference will surely be one reason they will be eternally linked in cycling history like the other legendary cycling rivalries \u2013 Fausto Coppi vs. Gino Bartali, Jacques Anquetil vs. Raymond Poulidor, Greg LeMond vs. Laurent Fignon.<\/p>\n

As Alasdair Fotheringham wrote in Cyclingnews<\/em><\/a>, \u201cIn fact, over the last five years, such consistent maintenance of his \u2018best of the rest\u2019 status has meant that Vingegaard has remained the link between the \u2018first mortals\u2019 behind Poga\u010dar and the stratospheric level at which the four-time Tour winner operates.\u201d In other words, Vingegaard was part human, part immortal, able to breathe both Poga\u010dar’s rarified air and the more common air \u201cthe rest\u201d inhale.<\/p>\n

In his excellent article, Fotheringham quotes Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe lead director Patxi Vila’s response to the question of whether it was possible for his two leaders to beat Poga\u010dar. Vila said that the more immediate goal was beating Vingegaard. \u201cIf we win that battle,\u201d he said, \u201cthen we’ll move onto another battle.\u201d\u00a0Put more dramatically, if Poga\u010dar is the Greek god Zeus, Vingegaard is his half-mortal son and guardian of Olympus, Hercules.<\/p>\n

Vingegaard’s ability has always defined Poga\u010dar’s greatness, just as the Slovenian’s greatness underscored the Dane’s distance from immortality. Without Poga\u010dar, Vingegaard would have been celebrated as one of the great riders in history. But without Vingegaard’s two Tour de France victories, Poga\u010dar would have been called merely the best of a mediocre bunch. And who knows how much his rivalry with the Visma leader drove Poga\u010dar to become the great rider he is? Would he have had the same motivation without a rival of Vingegaard’s ability? I doubt it.<\/p>\n

A different Tour<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Poga\u010dar was right, of course: the race has been changed by Vingegaard’s absence. For one thing, it appears to have given Remco Evenepoel wings. When Vingegaard was in the race, the Red Bull rider suffered on the long climbs, making up lost time only on the flats and\/or descents that followed them. But just two hours or so after Vingegaard abandoned the race, Evenepoel beat Poga\u010dar on the hardest climb of the race so far, the Beyond Category (HC) ascent to the Plateau de Solaison (11.3 km @9.1%).<\/p>\n

\n
\"vingegaard-crashes-out-on-stage-15-as-remco-beats-pogacar-on-big-climb\"\/<\/a><\/div>
\n Road cycling<\/a>\n <\/div>\n
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Tour Shocks: Vingegaard Crashes Out on Stage 15 as Remco Beats Poga\u010dar on Big Climb<\/span><\/h3>\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n <\/article>\n<\/div>\n

Coincidence? Or is Evenepoel just coming good in the race? Or was that a confirmation of Patxi Vila’s words, that with the first battle out of the way, the world time trial champion was able to move on to the next one? My first thought at seeing Remco ride with Poga\u010dar on that climb was that he was filling a job vacancy and had simply been waiting for the opening in order to show what he’s got under the hood.<\/p>\n

It’s too early to say if that was just a superior day for Evenepoel or if he will now replace Vingegaard as the main opposition to the Great One. Regardless, it will be a different rivalry and, yes, a different race \u2013 especially for Poga\u010dar, who has always seen himself as battling Vingegaard. He must have been as shocked as I was to see Evenepoel on his tail on the Solaison climb.<\/p>\n

Was that the reason he didn’t go all out on the sprint to the finish line because the satisfaction of beating Remco would not have been as great as beating Jonas again? After all, Evenepoel has never beaten him in the Tour GC, while Jonas beat him twice. If you don’t think that makes a difference to a competitor like Poga\u010dar, think again. Another reason might have been that he wouldn’t have felt right celebrating a victory on the day Vingegaard crashed out. That might have been seen as disrespectful and, as we know, Poga\u010dar is a good guy.<\/p>\n

The race will not be the same without our hoping against hope that on this climb or on the next one Vingegaard may beat Poga\u010dar. All cycling fans \u2013 except for the most die-hard Pogiephiles \u2013 would have rejoiced to see Vingegaard take a stage this year. I think Evenepoel’s victory was not as satisfying perhaps because he just doesn’t have the same history of perseverance and determination \u2013 and, yes, frustration \u2013 in the battle against the GOAT. Remember that Vingegaard rode in the 2024 Tour less than three months after a near-fatal crash in the Itzulia Basque Country \u2013 and finished second, for me his most remarkable race.<\/p>\n

I think his recent failures to beat Poga\u010dar prevented us from seeing just what a great rider Vingegaard is and how essential he has been to our enjoyment of the Tour de France. As the great Joni Mitchell wrote in her song \u201cBig Yellow Taxi\u201d: \u201cDon’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?\u201d I miss him already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The moment the television camera showed Jonas Vingegaard getting into an ambulance after his crash on Sunday’s stage 15, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":205900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[8747,5450,433,9079],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-205899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-2026-tour","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-tour-de-france","tag-vingegaard-tour-crash","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"\nVingegaard Out of the Tour: \u201cYou Don't Know What You've Got 'til It's Gone\u201d - \u0160koda We Love Cycling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The moment the television camera showed Jonas Vingegaard getting into an ambulance after his crash on Sunday's stage 15, an odd feeling came over me: the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2026\/07\/20\/vingegaard-out-of-the-tour-you-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-gone\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vingegaard Out of the Tour: \u201cYou Don't Know What You've Got 'til It's Gone\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The moment the television camera showed Jonas Vingegaard getting into an ambulance after his crash on Sunday's stage 15, an odd feeling came over me: the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2026\/07\/20\/vingegaard-out-of-the-tour-you-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-gone\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"\u0160koda We Love Cycling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-20T14:36:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/2\/2026\/07\/Pogacar-Vingegaard-Tour-profimedia-1117170499-CVR.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"990\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"660\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tereza\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Siegfried Mortkowitz\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2026\/07\/20\/vingegaard-out-of-the-tour-you-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-gone\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2026\/07\/20\/vingegaard-out-of-the-tour-you-dont-know-what-youve-got-til-its-gone\/\",\"name\":\"Vingegaard Out of the Tour: \u201cYou Don't Know What You've Got 'til It's Gone\u201d - 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