Jonas Vingegaard has not experienced loss at the Tour de France before. He has not won every time he has been at the race – he finished second in 2021 – but that was unexpected, that was the Visma-Lease a Bike announcing himself. He won in 2022, and in 2023, but now he came up short. As Tadej Pogačar celebrated, he looked downcast.
And who could blame the Dane? He had his season’s one main goal all but kicked out from underneath him in the most violent way thanks to a crash – but he had to face it down anyway – it always going to hurt.
Turns out though, we needn’t have worried too much.
Appearing on French television less than 10 minutes later, Vingegaard was wearing the relaxed smile of someone who had just realised he hadn’t run out of tea bags after all.
A short while later, the Tour’s podium press conference confirmed his mellow good humour, declaring that this second place could be his biggest result yet.
“It’s very nice for me to be back at a very, very high level,” he said. “After everything that happened with the crash… to be able to get back like this, second is a very big result.
“I think, with everything in mind, it might be even a bigger result than winning the Tour when everything went perfect.”
He even managed a touch of black humour when asked about what he might do to return even better to beat Pogačar next time round. There was a big step to be made in his preparation, he said, adding that said ‘big step’ was not to break every bone in the right side of his upper body and puncture both lungs.
The 26-year-old reminded journalists that he had spent eight days bed-bound in intensive care after his crash at Itzulia Basque Country in April, and 12 days’ total in hospital. It’s a wonder he made it to the Tour at all and spoke volumes about the fact he was so at peace with second place.
All the same, Vingegaard said he had put out some “pretty incredible” power figures during the race and after winning stage 11 to Le Lorian he said he thought he could go on to win.
“I was believing I could really win this Tour from there on,” he said. “Also before, because I knew I had a high level. I did the best ever performance on Plateau de Beille [stage 15]. It was a 40-minute climb, and looking at my power numbers it was pretty incredible.”
He held on to the belief for a long time, he said, but finally a bad day at Isola 2000 left him “hanging on for dear life”, and conceding defeat at the end of the stage.
He gave credit to Pogačar, admitting: “Tadej was stronger, so he deserves to win. It’s really impressive how he rode this Tour de France.”
There would be no Vuelta a España for him this year, he said. Instead, rest. And then he would think about what came next.
