Vintage Vingegaard? Giro rivals are not convinced just yet

Is this vintage Vingegaard?

For Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM), the answer is not so simple. The Austrian was close enough on Blockhaus to take confidence, but not close enough to claim that Vingegaard had shown weakness.

“Jonas is still the big favourite,” Gall said. “I didn’t beat him. He’s still much faster. He’s also a much better time trialist and he has proven he’s the best Grand Tour rider, in my opinion, next to Tadej.”

Gall was asked whether this is the best version of the Dane. He did not pretend to know.

“I cannot tell you that,” he said to CyclingPro.net. “He is the favourite. He won the first mountain-top finish, so he delivered. But I don’t know how much he has left. If he is maybe holding something back for the Tour de France or not, I don’t know.”

Ben O’Connor (Jayco AlUla) was even less willing to get drawn into the debate. The Australian shrugged at the idea of judging him against the rider who has so often torn Grand Tours apart.

“You can’t really tell, to be fair,” O’Connor said to CyclingPro.net. “It’s not like Tour de France ’23. Or even last year, to be fair. Those guys always do crazy stuff. But I don’t really care, to be honest. I do my own race and see how I go.”

Pre race, Giulio Pellizzari had been billed as one of Vingegaard’s main challengers. Asked the same question, the Italian also measured the Dane against the standards he has set at the Tour de France. Pellizzari was not ready to say this is the best version of Vingegaard, but he was certain about his own level.

“I don’t know actually if it’s his best version,” Pellizzari said to CyclingPro.net. “I think he did better performances in the Tour in the past. But I’m sure that I’m at the best level of me.”

In short, Vingegaard’s rivals are finding it difficult to gauge just how much the Dane still has in reserve. That uncertainty can largely be explained by his decision to target the Giro-Tour double, and by the battle that awaits him with Tadej Pogačar in July. As a result, he will want to win the Giro as economically as possible.

And although Vingegaard is currently in the strongest position, his rivals are far from giving up. Pellizzari made that clear when he said: “As far as I know, the Giro finishes in Rome. A lot of things can happen. It’s super hard to stay focused every day, but in the end, you have to do it.”

Gall’s ambitions, meanwhile, became clear when discussing today’s race plan and the responsibility he and his team are willing to take.

“We’d like to see the peloton racing for the stage win today,” he said. “I’m helping control the breakaway and hopefully other GC teams have the same interest. We have a really hard final and maybe I can see what’s possible, maybe gain a few seconds again, or at least stay in the game.”

Maybe Gall, O’Connor and Pellizzari will have another answer to the Vintage Vingegaard question after 184km of racing today.