Tradition holds it that the yellow jersey of the Tour de France holds a press conference on the rest day, but Jumbo-Visma’s reinvention of the wheel in recent years has extended to removing even that courtesy.
Jonas Vingegaard was not available to speak to the written press in Clermont-Ferrand on Monday, with his team instead limiting his engagements to one oven-ready, pre-recorded interview, which was then served up via the team’s Telegram channel in the early evening to be reheated by media outlets around the world.
“The interview is conducted by Danish TV2,” read the dispatch from Jumbo-Visma. “A mention is appreciated.” Consider it done.
As anticipated, this Tour has quickly boiled down to a straight duel between the defending champion Vingegaard and two-time winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), who have been in a class entirely on their own every time the road has risen on this race to date.
“You could say that the third place is now at 2:40 seconds, so there are already some huge gaps in the rankings,” Vingegaard said of his duel with Pogačar. “So I think if one of us hadn’t been there, it might not have been the funniest Tour de France to watch.”
When Vingegaard put more than a minute into Pogačar on the road to Laruns on stage 5, mind, it briefly looked as though the Dane might have been on the cusp of delivering an early knock-out blow. Pogačar, however, won the next two rounds, dropping Vingegaard to win at Cauterets the following day, and then prising another eight seconds back at Puy de Dôme on Sunday.
In the overall standings, Pogačar is now just 17 seconds off Vingegaard’s lead and seemingly building momentum as the race approaches the second week. In the transcript of the interview released on Monday evening, however, Vingegaard suggested that the terrain ahead – most notably in the Alps at the weekend – is better tailored to his qualities.
“Yeah, I definitely think so. Or so it has been usually at least. And that is what we believe that I can make the difference on the longer and harder days. And the farther we get in the Tour and more fatigued everyone gets, the better we think it will be for me,” Vingegaard said.
“Some of the stages to come will feature more than one mountain and the entire day will be up and down and not just a mountaintop finish. So far, the only days that has accumulated fatigue has been stage 5 on the Marie Blanque. Those are the days that suit me the best and in the next two…
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