Vingegaard and Visma to repeat Giro strategy on Tour sprint stages

Every day is a potential GC day at the Tour de France, and the yellow jersey contenders tend to race accordingly, battling for prime positions at the head of the peloton until deep into the finale.

This season, however, Jonas Vingegaard and Visma | Lease a Bike have been trying a different tack on sprint stages, and it was especially evident in the opening phase of the Giro d’Italia in May.

Rather than park themselves at the front among the sprinters’ teams, Vingegaard sat towards the back of the peloton, with his entire team around him and ready to pace him back to the front in the event of any splits.

The strategy isn’t a new one, given that Giuseppe Martinelli devised a similar plan for Marco Pantani and Mercatone Uno on the 1998 Tour, but it does mark a break from the norm in the Tour of the 2020s, where GC men seem to battle for every available inch.

Stage 5 to Pau looks destined to produce the first bunch sprint of this year’s Tour, and Visma sports director Marc Reef indicated to Feltet that his team would repeat their approach from the Giro.

“We did it in Paris-Nice, we did it in Catalunya, we did it in the Giro quite often and it’s also what we’re going to do today,” Reef said. “At a certain moment, when the stress starts, we will back off and sit in the back.”

The approach might increase the chance of coughing up seconds in a split, but in Reef’s view, it minimises the risk of costly crashes, both for Vingegaard and for the peloton as a whole.

“Safety: safety for ourselves and safety for the sprinters,” he said, when asked the rationale behind the strategy. “We have seen it in the past a lot of times, when you are in the front in the Tour, it’s really hectic, more hectic than in any other race. 

“Of course, every GC rider is scared to lose time in the sprint stages, and they make sure they are all in front, battling with the sprinters. I think if we make the space for the sprinter teams, then also in general it will be safer in the bunch.”

The thought was echoed by Vingegaard when he spoke to Danish station TV2 in the mixed zone before the start in Lannemezan, and he expressed the hope that his rivals would follow suit.

“I have to get through without losing time and crashing,” Vingegaard said of the day’s stage. “We expect it to be a relatively calm stage. There is no wind. It is a relatively easy finale, so we will do a bit like the rest of the year: take it easy and hope that the other classification teams do the same.”

Vingegaard currently lies fifth overall, on the same time as favourite Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), but 7:53 off Torstein Træen (Uno-X Mobility), who moved into yellow thanks to his presence in the break on stage 4. 

Træen led last year’s Vuelta a España for four days, and Vingegaard backed him to hold yellow for several stages despite the Tour’s passage over the Col du Tourmalet on Thursday.

“But I don’t think UAE see making up the time as a major problem,” Vingegaard said. “It will, of course, take some time and a few stages before we can make up eight minutes.”