“My stages are coming now”
Vingegaard fights with “arrogance” against big rivals
7/10/2023 1:21 p.m
It’s a thriller, spread over many days, that cycling fans will be treated to at this year’s Tour de France. The duel between defending champion Jonas Vingegaard and challenger Tadej Pogacar is electrifying. However, one is much more approachable than the other.
Jonas Vingegaard used the long-awaited rest day for a general mental overhaul: sleep in, a relaxed ride, no annoying media rounds with critical questions. And above all: see nothing and hear little of his great rival Tadej Pogacar, who is putting a lot of pressure on the defending champion and (still) overall leader of the Tour de France and buzzing around him in the mountains like an annoying fly.
“I’m in the yellow jersey and my stages are just coming up now, so I’m really happy,” said the 26-year-old Dane, although Pogacar had knocked him down steeply uphill for the second time in a row at the Puy de Dome on Sunday, seemed stronger and only 17 seconds behind Vingegaard.
But while the two-year-old Slovenian in the fight for his third Tour title after 2020 and 2021 was as cool and aggressive off the country roads as he was on those roads – “I’m doing super well,” said Pogacar, the climbing on the Puy de Dome felt like it like “flying up” – the taciturn Vingegaard shows a certain thin-skinnedness.
Vingegaard doesn’t want to talk about Pogacar
Everything about Pogacar has to be discussed with him, Vingegaard replied on Sunday when asked about a remedy against Pogacar’s attacks, he himself does not deal with his opponent. “When I’m preparing for a tour, I don’t think about him, I think about how I can improve,” said Vingegaard. And that’s what he wants to focus on at the next showdown at the Grand Colombier on Friday and in the Alps.
But exactly in those areas where Vingegaard had been expected to have advantages, he has not had any. In the high mountains he is not untouchable like he was in 2022. And there is no sign of the expected increase in form compared to Pogacar, who was struggling with the consequences of a scaphoid fracture until shortly before the tour.
And so it should be a fascinating duel at eye level until the last mountain stage on the penultimate day of the tour. Which, apart from the extraordinary sporting quality of both rivals, draws its appeal above all from the completely opposite types – as once with Coppi/Bartali, Anquetil/Poulidor, Fignon/LeMond or Armstrong/Ullrich.
“jokes” versus “arrogance”
“I can’t remember ever having seen two such different characters as favorites,” said former tour winner Andy Schleck in L’Equipe: “Tadej is always fun, jokes, talks a lot. Jonas is totally shy, hardly speaks and exudes a certain arrogance.” And anyway, Schleck’s driving style of Vingegaard’s mighty Jumbo Visma team would – sacrebleu! – rather “remind of a German tank army”.
“I don’t care what Schleck says,” said Vingegaard: “Arrogant? I may be calm, but not unapproachable.” Nevertheless: The cool Vingegaard has to accept that he is not the crowd favorite in France, which he was last year when the tour started in his native Denmark. And with the fact that Pogacar, who was previously viewed critically as a very young dominator from a UAE team with quite shady staff, is suddenly a popular figure.
Meanwhile, the rest of the field can only watch the duel of the super drivers from afar in amazement. “The two are simply in their own league,” said Bora-hansgrohe captain Jai Hindley on the rest day. After the first stage in the Pyrenees, the Australian was still yellow, but now he is leading in a way in the “game for third place” – 2:40 minutes behind Vingegaard.