Sometimes a single gesture says it all, and when Jonas Vingegaard flashed across the finishing line of the Tour de France stage 16 time trial to clinch the victory in spectacular style, Jumbo-Visma teammate Wout Van Aert was so impressed the only thing he could think of doing was doff his cap as a mark of respect.
Van Aert is still hunting for the tenth Tour de France stage victory of his career, and for a while, it looked as if the 22-kilometre hilly race against the clock on Tuesday might have been where the Belgian National Time Trial Champion could have finally got it.
Instead, he had to settle for third almost three minutes behind Vingegaard and 1:23 behind the flying Dane’s arch-rival Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates). As Van Aert joked to reporters: “Me? I’m the best of the normal people.”
On a day when Vingegaard has taken such a big step towards yellow, Van Aert was more than happy to take one for the team.
“Finally, we’ve got a stage win here for the team,” Van Aert told reporters. “The time he’s done is incredible, it’s crazy, I certainly didn’t expect that kind of a gap – but so much the better.
“He’s progressed a lot since last year, and the time trial being so hard certainly suited him. Not changing bikes, too, was a good tactic to do.”
The complexities of a technical, challenging time trial course with multiple sectors were clear from Van Aert’s own experiences on the stage, where he wavered between setting the best time ahead of Remi Cavagna (Soudal-QuickStep) or faltering in the finale.
Cavagna set a time of 35:42, and Van Aert was just one second slower than the Frenchman at the first checkpoint at kilometre 7.1. However, on the flatter terrain through Sallanches that followed up to the foot of the Côte de Domancy, Van Aert found himself at a disadvantage to an all-out powerhouse TT specialist like Cavagna and lost 20 seconds.
The climb, though, reversed the duo’s fortunes again, and by the top Van Aert was two seconds faster. He then powered up the remainder of the drag to the finish to such effect that by the summit he was a good 15 seconds ahead of the Frenchman.
Ultimately, though, his effort proved insufficient to take the Tour de France stage win.
“We’ve seen in the whole of the Tour that these two were so much better than the rest, but it’s a very good day for us.”
However, Van Aert preached considerable caution about getting overly confident even if the tide is now seemingly flowing firmly in Vingegaard’s favour.
“We won the Tour last…
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