Jonas Vingegaard has admitted his surprise at how hard the first week of the Tour de France has been.
The Visma-Lease a Bike rider is looking to win his third Tour title in four years, but after six stages, is one minute and 13 seconds adrift of Tadej Pogačar, having lost more than a minute in the stage five time trial.
On stages two and four, Vingegaard matched Pogačar’s accelerations in the punchy finishes, indicating that it should be a fair fight in the mountains. But such a hectic opening week, which has also been characterised by multiple crashes, has shocked the Dane.
“To be honest, it’s been quite a first week,” he said after the sixth stage, won by EF Education-EasyPost’s Ben Healy. “When I first saw the Tour route I thought it would be an easy first week, but to be honest it hasn’t been as easy first week.
“Hopefully it will build up more and more and I think this Tour de France will end up being very hard.”
Twenty-four hours on from suffering losses in the time trial, Vingegaard dismissed the idea that the explosive days earlier in the week were to blame: “I don’t think that’s the reason. If it was I would also have been suffering more today. We have to analyse more of what happened.
“For sure yesterday was a tough day for me, I am definitely disappointed with yesterday, as I should be. But today was a new day and I felt a lot better. I am happy with how I was feeling today and we focus on tomorrow now.”
Stage seven could produce small gaps between the GC group, with the finish on Mûr de Bretagne almost certainly going to prompt attacks from the likes of Vingegaard and Pogačar.
Ever upbeat, Vingegaard added: “I have definitely got better since the Dauphiné [where he finished second to Pogačar]. I am 100% sure about that. Is it enough? We’ll see by the end of the Tour.”
