The gloves are not quite off, but tension is brewing: after six years of being amicable towards each other during their captivating Tour de France tussle, Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates-XRG have now begun to trade verbal and physical blows.
Ahead of the looming mountain tests that will determine the winner of this year’s race, Tadej Pogačar has become visibly irritated with Visma’s tactics in recent days, which seemed designed to put the Slovenian back into yellow, even though he might have preferred someone else to have it on the flatter transition days south.
And then on stage seven, which Pogačar won in Mûr-de-Bretagne, cameras spotted the world champion pushing Visma’s second GC card Matteo Jorgenson during a feed zone.
The Slovenian appeared to do so because Jorgenson got in his way, meaning that the defending champion couldn’t retrieve a bottle from a soigneur; Jorgenson, too, also failed to get a bidon.
Speaking to ITV Sport ahead of the start of stage eight – a sleepy day through western France eventually won by Lidl-Trek’s Jonathan Milan – Jorgenson smiled when asked about the incident. “I don’t need to comment on that,” he said. “I missed a bottle.”
Pogačar, however, was far more happy to discuss what happened. “There was a feed zone and we were riding in one line, and I showed an intention to go for a bottle,” he said. “My soigneur was about 20 metres after Visma. But they decided to pass us on the right side.
“So if I wanted to take a bottle, I could not do anything else but give him a little bit of a push, so I could get my bottle.”
Pogacar shoves Matteo through the feed zone, causing him to miss a bottle. No penalty tho bc it didn’t cause a crash 🥴 #tdf25
— @kris.to (@kris.to.bsky.social) 2025-07-12T16:33:57.494Z
Expanding further, Pogačar suggested that Visma have form for cutting riders up at bottle collection points. “For me, it was normal – but I don’t know what their intention was,” he continued. “They do this a lot of times, coming in front of you in feed zones like they’re the only ones having bottles there.
“Sometimes you have to be patient and stay on the wheel when taking a bottle and pay respect to everybody.”
After stage eight, Visma’s lead sports director Grischa Niermann was told about Pogačar’s comments that there needed to be more respect in the peloton. “The same back to him,” Niermann smirked.
“It was a normal incident,” he went on. “Matteo wanted to take a bottle and Tadej also wanted to take one.
“Maybe we should tell our soigneurs to stand a little bit further apart from each other. Like this [both teams’ soigneurs positioned closely together] they both didn’t get a bottle because Matteo also missed his, so that’s a pity.”
In the grand scheme of things, it’s only a minor skirmish, but it does add a level of intrigue to the battle as the race hots up. Will mind games ultimately settle round six of the UAE-Visma contest?
