'Pogacar gave us a nice punch in the face' - Inside Jonas Vingegaard’s Tour de France preparation

Jonas Vingegaard had plenty to think about when he took up residence in Tignes for Visma | Lease a Bike’s final training camp ahead of the Tour de France. The Critérium du Dauphiné doubled as something of a weigh-in for the Tour, and the tale of the tape was a sobering one: Tadej Pogačar’s supersonic climbing displays make him the obvious and outright favourite for the yellow jersey. 

There is no public dissent with that consensus, even from within Vingegaard’s camp. In conversation with Domestique, Visma head of performance Mathieu Heijboer stresses that his main concern over these past weeks has been on Vingegaard’s condition, but he isn’t blind to the size of the Pogačar problem that faces them in July.

“We focus mainly on Jonas because that’s what we control, and we know what he can do and should work on,” Heijboer says. “But of course, we also look above us, at Pogačar. He’s the best rider in the world right now. He gave us a nice punch in the face again. We try to learn from him, but we cannot turn Jonas into Pogačar. We have to focus on getting the best out of Jonas and the team.”

Vingegaard started his season with victory at the Volta ao Algarve, but his Spring was interrupted by the concussion he suffered at Paris-Nice. He didn’t compete again until the Dauphiné in June, though both rider and team downplayed the impact of those missing racing miles. “He missed doing longer climbs in Catalunya but since then we’ve done everything we wanted to do,” Heijboer says. “I don’t think we could have prepared better.”

The Dane has long had a reputation within his team for diligence in adhering to training plans to the letter, and there was relief rather than surprise when his Dauphiné started with an attack on the opening day and a fine display in the time trial. “We were very happy with how Jonas did,” Heijboer says. “There was still some work to do in Tignes, of course, but I think he was even a little bit ahead of what we expected.” 

By now, the friendly confines of Tignes must be as familiar to Vingegaard and the Visma squad as the Deer Lake training compound was to Muhammad Ali. Each of Vingegaard’s four Tour appearances have been preceded by a stint at the Alpine ski resort. The numbers on the Dane’s powermeter are ultimately what it’s all about, of course, but it can’t harm morale to return to the same place from which he plotted Pogačar’s downfall in 2022 and 2023.

Vingegaard will surely be buoyed, too, by the comparison with twelve months ago. Back then, after a life-threatening crash at Itzulia Basque Country, his very participation in the Tour remained in doubt until mid-June. Although he started the Tour at his ideal racing weight, he had lost muscle during his rehabilitation. He still produced a spirited display to stay in Pogačar’s orbit until the third weekend, but his hastily patched together preparation took its as the race wore on.

“Last year, we were in a hurry,” Heijboer says. “He was still coping with the consequences of the crash, even mentally. The Tour was his first race after the crash, so there were a lot of insecurities. This year, those insecurities are gone. He feels comfortable in the peloton, there's no fear. His training was more controlled. We were able to work on all aspects of performance. So yeah, we’re way more confident in Jonas’ level and performance for this Tour than last year.”

Even in Pogačar’s shadow, Vingegaard still managed to produce some extraordinary athletic performances at last year’s Tour, though Heijboer gently warns against extrapolating too much from the data of a single climb. Vingegaard’s numbers at Plateau de Beille on stage 15 may have been eyewatering, but that doesn’t mean his overall level in 2024 exceeded that of his two Tour victories.

“A lot of people made a conclusion based on Plateau de Beille because that was his best relative performance ever on a longer duration climb and his w/kg were never better,” Heijboer says. “But the Tour is much more than that and performance is much more than that. And there were a lot of other things that weren’t as good as they could be. 

“This year, everything has been more secure. We’ve been able to work on strength, explosivity, time trialling, and longer climbs. It’s a different world.”

When Vingegaard rode his first Tour in 2021, he entered the race in relative anonymity as a domestique for Primož Roglič only to be catapulted into a leadership role when the Slovenian crashed out in the opening week. Finishing second to Pogačar there bumped Vingegaard up the hierarchy, though it was clear even as he won the 2022 Tour that he was still adjusting to the rhythms and demands of being a leader.

These days, Vingegaard looks rather more comfortable in the role. He remains quite a guarded media performer, but he is visibly more at ease in the spotlight than he was during his victorious Tour campaigns, when his perfunctory press conferences often felt like an ordeal for rider and reporters alike. On the team bus, too, Vingegaard is looser than he was a few years back.

“In his first year, he was a leader in the Tour de Polgone, but because of his nervousness, he couldn't eat, and he got dropped immediately in the yellow jersey,” Heijboer says. “But since then, his level of confidence has increased so much. Even when he finished second in the Tour, he was still really in the shadow of Primož and Wout [van Aert], so he had a very ‘safe’ environment, let’s say.

“But the next year, he was one of the two leaders, and we really coached him to develop his leadership skills, to encourage his teammates, to show a good example of how a leader should be.  And I think that level of leadership and confidence has grown every year. Now there are fewer surprises in cycling for him. He’s always ready for the fight, and he knows he’s a Grand Tour rider, so he focuses all his energy there.”

At the Tour, Vingegaard is again Visma’s lone leader, with Matteo Jorgenson likely to be his last man in the mountains. “He won’t be the first to work for Jonas. We want to keep him in GC. He’s very dangerous there,” says Heijboer. Elsewhere, Sepp Kuss, an absentee in 2024, returns to the fray, but there is also some calculated risk in the Visma line-up. Three riders from the Giro d’Italia squad – Wout van Aert, Edoardo Affini and winner Simon Yates – are also riding the Tour. By contrast, Adam Yates is the only man on double duty at UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

“Wout and Simon knew up front they’d do both Grand Tours, so we took that into account,” says Heijboer. “For Affini and Wout, it’s not a problem. Simon was more fatigued, so he needed more time, but he recovered, and he feels ready. 

“We’re confident about the decision, but we’ll only know in Paris. But like every year, we see cycling as a team sport and we try to beat Pogačar and the other opponents with Visma | Lease a Bike and Jonas.”

Ultimately, however, it will all come down to Vingegaard and whether he can outmanoeuvre and outlast his rival as he did in 2022 and 2023, when the Dane emerged as an emphatic winner. Last year ultimately became a Pogačar exhibition as the Slovenian ran up the score in the final week, but there was mitigation in Vingegaard’s truncated build-up. And this year?

“Although we lost at the Dauphiné, it was still a battle: Pogačar didn’t take two minutes on every stage. There were positives to take, and we were confident Jonas could improve his level,” Heijboer says. “We still feel confident about that, but we’re also clearly not the favourites. We’re pretty realistic about that.”

Then again, that was the case in 2022, only for Vingegaard to pull off the feat of humbling the supposedly invulnerable Pogačar. And just to prove it was no fluke, he did it again a year later. Pogačar is the greatest rider of his generation and possibly the greatest of all-time, but Vingegaard’s aptitude for the very specific demands of the Tour de France – notably the heat, the high altitude and the third week – will make it a contest. 

“For sure, that’s still his terrain, although the first week can be dangerous and Pogačar has improved in the heat and altitude,” Heijboer says. “Still, the third week will probably decide the race.”