Big winter needed for Jonas Vingegaard "if we’re to push on and close the gap with Pogacar” admits Visma leader's long-time coach

In 2022 and 2023, Jonas Vingegaard took the overall victory at the Tour de France, cementing his place as the leading Grand Tour rider in the peloton. In 2024 however, his storied rival Tadej Pogacar came back with a vengeance, reclaiming the Maillot Jaune as part of probably the greatest individual season of all time.

As such, Vingegaard and Team Visma | Lease a Bike are well aware a big season is needed in 2025 if Pogacar's dominance is to be overthrown. “Jonas is back in training and doing well,” explains Visma's Tim Heemskerk in conversation with Velo. “We’re already building up toward 2025. He’s in a good place and confident. He’s already thinking about, and looking forward to, next year.”

Although Vingegaard missed a big part of his preparation for the 2024 Tour de France following a nasty crash in the Basque Country, Heemskerk and Visma are confident that with a good, strong winter in his legs, the Dane can stop the seemingly unstoppable Pogacar. “We can build up to put in a really good foundation for next year by starting training this early,” Heemskerk explains. “It’s something we really needed. After the crash, things were still missing this summer. Jonas is training really well on the bike, but focussing on his strength and conditioning also. This means he can start to normalize again after he lost some muscle mass last year.”

“We can only accept Pogacar raised the bar this year. It’s a big, big advantage we could start early with Jonas. We need it if we’re to push on and close the gap with Pogacar,” continues the coach. “We cannot sit back and say that Jonas could have beaten Pogacar this year with proper preparation and not losing time to the crash. We need to evaluate and look at everything to beat him. It’s about next week, winter, pre-season. Everything until the Tour. We know we have a very big task ahead of us.”

As mentioned, optimism is high too. “Jonas is in a good place, mentally and physically,” Heemskerk notes. “Things are going very well so far. Our biggest problem right now is to prevent him being too good too early. That can happen with guys this talented.”

“We’ve got time to really work on the weaknesses now. His strength and explosivity. He lost some of that due to his crash,” Heemskerk concludes. “Every week it starts to look better again. Everything will come back to how it was. And then after that we have to make the next step we need to keep competitive.”