Vingegaard on Pogacar - 'You want to win if he’s not there, but it’s nicer to win when he is'

Vingegaard placed second to his rival at the Tour de France last month and he sets out on Saturday mindful that anything less than overall victory in Madrid will be interpreted as a failure.

“No, I don’t feel like there’s more pressure,” Vingegaard said in a video call with reporters on Thursday. “If you look at it in that way, the Tour de France is the race with the most media and everything, the most pressure. Compared to the Tour, it doesn’t really feel like there’s more pressure here. 

“Of course, I’m one of the big favourites here so there is some pressure. But I’m just happy to be here and to go for the win.”

Vingegaard has won nine of the last 13 stage races he has finished. He lost out to teammate Sepp Kuss on the 2023 Vuelta, while his three other defeats came at the hands of Pogačar. The absence of the Slovenian clearly changes the dynamic of this Vuelta.

“It’s always nice to race against Tadej on one hand, but it’s also nice to race where he’s not sometimes. You want to win if he’s not there, but it’s nicer to win when he’s there,” said Vingegaard, who politely declined when asked to expand on that thought. “No, I think I said enough about that.”

Vingegaard may feel he has unfinished business with the Vuelta after he was hemmed in by team tactics two years ago, but he played a straight bat when asked about his team’s sweep of the podium in 2023.

“I think we in the team can be pretty happy with how it ended, with one, two and three in the GC,” he said. “I don’t think that has ever happened before, and it’s going to be a lot of years before it happens again.”

Directeur sportif Grischa Niermann played down the idea that it might happen again here, stressing that Vingegaard was the outright leader despite the presence of Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson in the Visma | Lease a Bike squad at the race, which gets under way in Turin on Saturday.

“To start with, we have a clear leader and that’s Jonas,” Niermann said. “Of course, we have very strong guys, including Sepp and Matteo. But how we will play out in detail in our tactics, you will find out in the race.”

Vingegaard prepared for the Vuelta with an extended spell of training in Annecy in the French Alps, and he declared himself satisfied with his preparation despite a brief bout of illness. He also confirmed on Thursday that he would not ride the World Championships in Rwanda, prompting a discussion about the risk of burn-out in contemporary cycling.

“I’m going to turn 29 soon. Ten years ago, it was only now that you started to perform, so there’s a lot more pressure from an earlier age and in some way it’s a bit more tiring. I don’t think we’ll see riders on this level until they’re 40 anymore,” said Vingegaard. “There’s a lot of altitude camps, a lot of racing, a lot away from home, and it is taking a toll on riders, but that’s how it is.”

The topic was flagged by Vingegaard’s wife, Trine Marie Hansen, in an interview with Danish media ahead of the Tour de France. 

Speaking to Domestique on Thursday, Visma | Lease a Bike manager Richard Plugge outlined how the team consulted with riders and their families regarding their race programmes and preparation.

“If you want to win races, you need to be dedicated to 100% and that counts for everyone in high performance organisations,” Plugge said. “We were the first team that brought the families to the high-altitude camps and put them in in apartments around the team. That’s something we still do now, and I think the families and everyone around the riders are really happy with that.

“We also discuss the whole season up front, with Jonas and all the riders. It’s not about asking permission from the people at home, but it’s just to bring them along in the whole planning and to get them involved in the way we work. I think there's a very good balance and that's also what the feedback of the riders says.”