"I still believe I can beat him, yes" - Jonas Vingegaard will not let Tadej Pogacar relax into 2025 Tour de France

Team Visma | Lease a Bike wants to win the Tour de France after getting wrestled out of it in 2024 and they are bringing the heat to UAE Team Emirates - XRG. On their media day, it was possible to already learn about their '8' for the Grand Boucle, an incredibly strong lineup, but Jonas Vingegaard himself is keen on beating Tadej Pogacar and will not settle for a minor result.

Vingegaard was asked about the Giro d'Italia firstly, and he explains why he is not racing it: “We’ve been thinking about it and we had all the options on the table – we were actually talking about going to the Giro. But pretty soon we realized that the main goal would always be the Tour de France. We were thinking about taking the Giro as a kind of preparation, but there are so many factors when you go to the Giro," he said to a group of journalists, as reported by CyclingWeekly.

"How is the Giro? How is the weather? How hard do you have to go every day? There are a lot of things you can’t control yourself. Then we realized that if you go on a training camp you can control every training you do and that’s probably better.” So Vingegaard will use a preparation that's familiar to him, one that saw him win the 2022 and 2023 Tours. Training camp, Criterium du Dauphiné... Of course with a lot of training throughout the winter and spring towards the mountainous terrain.

Last spring the Dane's life was endangered by a terrifying crash at Itzulia Basque Country, but still he managed to recover and train enough to start the Tour near his best form. Whilst he couldn't take the win, it can be argued that the ascent to Plateau de Beille may have been his best climbing performance ever. Riders are evolving by the year, as he explains. “Cycling is now different than what it was 10 years ago. Nutrition has helped us a lot to perform at a higher level. 10 years ago they could do one Grand Tour but then they’d be too fatigued to do a second. Now with better nutrition and better training it helps you a lot.”

“I do feel like I have improved compared to last year and that I can get even better. We also still believe I can improve as a cyclist, but it’s more about focusing on yourself, getting better every day and to see what the outcome will be.” Vingegaard will debut at the Volta ao Algarve this season, and then race Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya. It's unclear if he will race in April at the time being.

And he could face Pogacar at the Dauphiné, Tour de France and also La Vuelta later in the year. “I still believe I can beat him, yes, and it might be at altitude. Of course, if you would have asked me two years ago, I’d have said that was my strength and where he was a bit less strong, but last year it seemed like he was strong in all aspects. I think we have to believe my strength is where we can make the difference.”

Visma have already asserted that Simon Yates, Sepp Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson will be supporting him in the mountains; whilst the other four riders will be very versatile and could be key in all kinds of terrains: Wout van Aert, Tiesj Benoot, Christophe Laporte and Victor Campenaerts. “I believe it’s a very strong team – it’s maybe even stronger than it ever has been before. I believe we have a lot of firepower uphill but also on the flat parts".

“To be honest, I don’t believe even with a strong team last year I would have been able to make the difference. It would have been hard for me because of the preparation I had. But of course it is also important to try to step up as a team as well, and I think we are doing that. I need to take a step as well to be able to fight for a victory," he concluded.