The 1996 Tour de France winner and team director Bjarne Riis has delivered a broadside of criticisms of Visma-Lease a Bike‘s tactics in stage six in this year’s race.
Jonas Vingegaard‘s squad rode aggressively during the very hilly, long stage from Bayeaux to Vire Normandie. First they tried to put Wout van Aert in the break early on, finally succeeding with teammate and 2025 Giro d’Italia winner Simon Yates. They then worked hard in the bunch, presumably to try and keep arch-rival Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), the leader after stage 5’s time trial, from ‘loaning’ the yellow to Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
Visma’s efforts to keep Van der Poel out of yellow failed, albeit only by one second, whilst Yates was powerless to stop Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) from breaking away 40 kilometres from the finish – although in the Briton’s defense, all the other riders in the eight-man move, barring Healy himself, of course would have to say the same.
“But from now on, Visma must focus on riding strategically so that Jonas can make up for lost time.”
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