Visma-Lease A Bike manager Richard Plugge has said that Jonas Vingegaard will be the strongest rider over the course of three weeks at the Tour de France, proclaiming that the Dane should be the favourite ahead of Tadej Pogačar.
The Danish star will be taking aim at his third career Tour de France title this July, with the pair having shared the previous five Tour wins among themselves.
Pogačar, who won the race in 2020, 2021 and 2024, is rated as the top favourite, by a narrow margin, for victory again this season. He has proven near unbeatable since the start of 2024, racking up 32 victories including the Tour, the Giro d'Italia, the World Championships, and four Monuments.
Last year's Tour de France victory, with a 6:17 margin over Vingegaard, came after the Dane saw his preparation badly disrupted by a career-threatening crash at Itzulia Basque Country.
This time around, there'll be no such caveat, and Plugge rates Vingegaard as the better rider over the course of a Grand Tour.
"You could perhaps say that Pogačar is better on Tour of Flanders-like courses, but this is about a three-week race. And in our view, Jonas is better at that, to be able to handle that accumulation of fatigue, etc," Plugge told WielerFlits on Wednesday.
Both Vingegaard and Pogačar have been ramping up their preparations for July recently, having headed to high altitude in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Spain for separate team training camps. The duo will return to racing in June for their final Tour de France preparation race, the Critérium du Dauphiné, next month.
So far in 2025, Pogačar has dominated the season with seven wins in 14 race days – including the UAE Tour, Strade Bianche, Tour of Flanders, La Flèche Wallonne, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Vingegaard has raced a more limited schedule, winning the Volta ao Algarve before racing Paris-Nice, which he was forced to abandon after a crash and resulting concussion.
Plugge acknowledged that Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad had made improvements since losing the 2023 Tour but said that Vingegaard and Visma-Lease A Bike have done the same since last summer.
"Due to circumstances, Jonas was simply less in the final week last year," he said. "I do think that UAE Team Emirates-XRG has made progress after the time trial to Combloux" - won by Vingegaard and effectively sealing his overall victory that year - "in the 2023 Tour."
"But so have we. And we are mainly looking at ourselves and how we can improve our performance. Compared to last year, we have taken another big step in that regard.
"Jonas has gained minutes on Pogačar for two years in a row. Last year, after a very flawed start and a pretty bad finish, physically, Jonas was also a big competitor towards the end.
"Jonas has also made progress again. I have no reason not to believe that we can go for yellow again."
