Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) would normally be satisfied with second in a sprint behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), but couldn't help but be left wanting more on stage 7 of the Tour de France, after admitting he made an error.
Visma's team bus was busy as usual after the stage, with the Dane and Matteo Jorgenson warming down in the shade behind, having finished second and fifth on the stinging Mûr-de-Bretagne finale.
Both with ice vests on, Jorgenson translated compliments from the French crowd in Brittany for Vingegaard, before he came to debrief the media and admitted the mistake that saw him out-kicked by Pogačar and never come out of his wheel.
"[Finishing] second, normally I would say that I could be really happy with it, but in my opinion, I made a few mistakes there in the sprint, and you never know if it would change anything, but anyway when you made a small mistake, you would like to do it differently," Vingegaard told Cyclingnews and Velo outside the bus.
"I think if I would have started my sprint just a second earlier, or two seconds earlier, then you could have surprised a bit, and it could have been closer, at least, you never know."
Was victory on the cards? Not necessarily, but he felt as though his timing let him down in the battle for the stage with his main rival for the GC: "No, I'm not saying I could have won, but I at least could have been closer."
Nevertheless, it's another stage on Pogačar's favoured territory completed, and he can now look ahead to the brutal stage 10 to Le Mont Dore, where eight climbs in the Massif Central will shake up the GC fight and Vingegaard can perhaps gain back time.
The opening seven days of racing have been hectic, difficult and full of action, with Vingegaard happy to see the other side of them. The big time trial loss was, of course, a low point, but the two-time Tour winner is trying to fully move on from it.
"No, of course, you can have a bad day. I had a bad day, and normally I dont have so many, so it was not nice," said Vingegaard. "But still, I believe in myself, and I believe that we can make a difference in the second and third week.
"It's been as a I said, like seven GC days already, six at least, it's been a hard first week, so it will be curious to see what it does in the third week, obviously, I think when you look at it, it's been a really hard Tour de France in general this year."
Jorgenson has seen the tough opening week similarly: "Except for stage 3, we've had full stress every day, so hopefully it will be nice this weekend," where the peloton will tackle two likely sprint stages, "and then Monday will be an all-out test."
The American sits sixth overall and looks set to be the key domestique throughout the Tour for Jonas. After he had another strong day, contrastingly, Pogačar's key climbing domestique João Almeida suffered a nasty high-speed crash on stage 7, with his injuries still yet to be confirmed.
Going forward, Visma and UAE's teams may only get ever more important in the vicious duel for the maillot jaune. Vingegaard is certainly happy to have some yellow and black company amid all the chaos, and he'll need his teammates tenfold when the mountains appear in weeks two and three.
"I had good legs today, the team kept me out of trouble, kept me in the front, and we did as we wanted to," said the Dane.
"Definitely, it's super good that we have Matteo up there as well. He's super strong, and he also showed it again and again. We have a super strong team, and we're ready to take on the fight in the mountains."
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