Visma | Lease a Bike play down favourites tag ahead of Tour de France team time trial

The Dutch squad arrive with a reputation in the discipline, a carefully selected Tour team and a highly detailed preparation plan. Still, according to Heijboer, the stage is too specific and too open to reduce it to a must-win day for Visma | Lease a Bike.

“We will do everything we can and try to get the maximum out of it,” Heijboer told WielerFlits and NOS. “But we are certainly not the top favourite. There are a lot of teams who can claim the win. We are among them, but it is not the case that only victory counts for us.”

The format of this year’s team time trial changes the tactical picture considerably. In a traditional team time trial, the time is usually taken on the fourth or fifth rider across the line. In Barcelona, the times will be taken individually. That makes the stage less about keeping a full unit together until the finish and more about delivering the team leader as fast as possible.

“You can drop the weaker links earlier, to put it a little bluntly,” Heijboer explained. “It becomes more of a leadout, a long leadout to the finish, rather than a real team time trial. So it is something different.”

For Visma | Lease a Bike, that means the opening part of the course will be handled by the riders with the biggest engines. The flatter first section should suit those with high absolute power, while the final kilometres, which include two climbs, are expected to bring the lighter climber types to the front.

“You look at the course and at the strengths of the riders,” Heijboer said. “We try to make the right combination. Our big engines, the riders with high absolute power, will mainly do their work on the flat. Then the climber types will come forward towards the end. Ultimately, Jonas has to be the first rider across the line.”

The plan is clear, but the execution is far from simple. Heijboer expects riders such as Matteo Jorgenson and Sepp Kuss to remain with Vingegaard deep into the final part of the stage, while the earlier work will be divided according to power, position and the demands of the course.

Visma | Lease a Bike have also had to manage the condition of Edoardo Affini, who crashed last week. The initial concern was serious, but Heijboer said the Italian has recovered far better than expected.

“When he crashed, we had little hope, and so did he,” Heijboer said. “But he recovered remarkably well. Fortunately, nothing was broken and there was no major damage. Within a few days he had no pain on the bike. We waited before making a decision, and now he is here at the start without any problems.”

The level of preparation underlines the importance of the stage. Heijboer said the team had already started working on the time trial during the winter. Riders visited the wind tunnel one or more times, and the team developed a new time trial suit as part of the project.

“It is a prestigious day for us, as it is for every team,” he said. “I do not think the differences for the general classification will be very big in the end, but there is a yellow jersey waiting.”

Training for a team time trial under this specific format has brought its own challenges. According to Heijboer, the technical and tactical side can be prepared in detail, but reproducing the full race situation safely is difficult.

“It is hard to really train this,” he said. “You train a lot with the riders, of course, but it is not easy to train team time trials safely. That makes it a challenge.”

To solve part of that problem, Visma | Lease a Bike rented the Formula 1 circuit in Barcelona last Wednesday. The closed environment allowed the team to practise at speed, discuss strategy and refine the order of rotations without the risks of open roads.

“It is mainly a lot of talking and going through the strategy very carefully with each other,” Heijboer said. “The riders need to know what they have to do. Fortunately, we have already had this formula a few times in Paris Nice. We won two of the four times, and we also won again recently in the Dauphiné. So I think we know well what we have to do. But it remains difficult to train.”

The course itself is split into two distinct parts. The opening section is long and flat, while the final section includes two climbs. That raises the question of how much time can still be made up after the flat part if a team starts the final climbs behind.

“That also depends on the strategy of other teams,” Heijboer said. “If you arrive at the foot of the climb already empty, and another team arrives there fresh, then differences can still be made up. It is difficult to say how much and how big those differences can be. But it is true that there are two parts to the course, and I think not only we, but also other teams, will approach it that way.”

Asked who he sees as the top favourite, Heijboer again refused to isolate Visma | Lease a Bike from the rest.

“I think we are among them,” he said. “But I also look at Netcompany-Ineos. They have a huge team at the start.”