Rasmussen rejects Vingegaard’s Giro explanation after Tour failure - 'It sounds like a poor excuse'
Former rider Michael Rasmussen says Jonas Vingegaard’s Giro d’Italia campaign cannot fully explain why he lacked his usual acceleration at the Tour de France.
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The Dane has dismissed Vingegaard’s explanation for his disappointing Tour de France, saying Visma | Lease a Bike had enough time to address the Dane’s lack of explosiveness before the race.
Vingegaard admitted after the Tour that his preparation may have been too heavily focused on long climbs. Having raced and won the Giro d’Italia in May, he had less time for the short and intense training efforts that had been part of his usual build up to July.
“We may have slightly misread the Tour this year,” Vingegaard said at a press conference during the Tour of Denmark last week. “We focused on making me stronger on the longer climbs. Looking back, perhaps we should have paid closer attention to the route and realised I needed more explosiveness.”
Rasmussen, however, dismissed that explanation.
“It sounds like a poor excuse,” he told Viaplay. “They had the entire month between the Giro and the Tour to make him more explosive.”
The former Tour de France contender also questioned whether fatigue from the Giro was a major factor. Vingegaard had won the Italian Grand Tour comfortably and did not appear to leave the race in a state of deep exhaustion.
“He did not come out of the Giro tired, considering how convincingly he won it,” Rasmussen said.
Vingegaard’s lack of acceleration was visible early in the Tour. In previous editions, he had been able to respond when Tadej Pogačar attacked on short and steep climbs. This time, he struggled to match the Slovenian when the pace changed sharply.
The first losses were small, but the gap widened in the mountains. Vingegaard lost two minutes and 42 seconds on the Tourmalet on stage 6, before Pogačar rode away from him again on stages 10 and 14.
By the time Vingegaard crashed and abandoned the race on stage 15, he was already four minutes and 30 seconds behind Pogačar in the general classification. The crash left him with a broken collarbone and ended his run of five consecutive top two finishes at the Tour.
Rasmussen added that a different approach would not have changed the outcome.
“Visma could have sent Jonas to the moon,” he said. “The result would still have been the same: defeat to Tadej Pogačar.”
Vingegaard said Visma chose not to analyse the issue in detail during the race. Those discussions will now form part of the team’s review of his Giro and Tour programme.
“It is easy to be wise afterwards,” Vingegaard said. “I have my ideas and the team may have theirs. We will have to talk about what happens next.”
Vingegaard’s racing schedule remains uncertain as he continues his recovery from surgery on a broken collarbone. He has yet to return to training and no date has been set for his comeback.
The World Championships road race in Montreal on September 27 remains a possibility, but the Dane said any decision would depend on how his recovery progresses.
“It is not out of the question,” Vingegaard said. “But I cannot say yet that it will happen.”
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