"If you had told me four months ago that I would be second, I wouldn't have believed you" - Jonas Vingegaard disappointed but proud of his Tour de France
Cycling
The Tour de France came to a wrap with Sunday's time trial in Nice, for many it was a final chance to either go for a stage success, or make up some time in the GC. However the podium was already settled and with Tadej Pogacar absolutely smashing the course, Jonas Vingegaard could already prepare his interview reactions on the way to Nice.
"Under any other circumstances I would have been disappointed," the Dane opened, before coming up with a logical but. "But after everything I've been through this year, with my crash, I don't have the right to do that now. My preparation wasn't optimal, but I also reached a very high level. So Pogacar deserves to win. If you had told me four months ago that I would be second, I wouldn't have believed you."
"It was a special race," the Dane told TV2. "Of course I hoped I could win, but I think that considering the build-up I had, it's quite normal the way it went. I fought for the win for two weeks, but in the last week I broke down and had a few bad days. Somehow I've also never been as tired as I am now."
"I haven't really had a break since November last year," he indicates. "Mentally I'm completely exhausted," the rider said. "If you had told me a few months ago that I would come second, I wouldn't have believed you. At that time I didn't even know if I would ever ride a bike again. So it feels like a victory, to come second here in the Tour. Even at my highest level I would have had a hard time beating Tadej."
"I haven't even had time to let it all sink in," Vingegaard said in his first reaction afterwards. "From the moment I got out of the hospital, I've been focused on the Tour. So everything that happened still has to sink in."
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This was a pretty cool summation of the end of Stage 20 by some guy on FB: There has been lots of chatter about the win today of Pogacar against Vinegaard. If we study the finish we see that it was a fair contest and Pogacar was taking every measure to offer a fair win to Vingegaard. 1. Pogacar takes front position and evens out to an easy pace. 2. Pogacar keeps looking back. 3. Vingegaard gets up out of the pedals to sprint. 4. Pogacar looks back and sees Vingegaard sprinting. 5. Pogacar launches his sprint against Vingegaard. 6. Jonas shakes head and drops back down. Pogacar gave Vingegaard every chance to fairly contest the sprint and win on the line. No gifts, but Pogacar did offer a fair competition, even giving Jonas the wheel to attack. To those who say Pogacar sat on the wheel, in the post race interview Vingegaard said he would have done the same if Pogacar engineered the attack. These guys are great sportsmen, imo!
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- Apart from a few outliers, in athletics, premature developers who held age group records didn’t get very far later and most athletes who became world stars never had early age records, I’d be surprised if in cycling it was any different.Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- You can enjoy it by all means but will you also take responsibility for the consequences of encouraging it through that? Because we all pay the price of the way it affects people, moods, behaviour, illness, violence, crime, social degeneration, etc, no real good comes of it or what do you feel there is to gain from it other than experiencing a momentary emotional high some might not be able to achieve any other way?Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- There's no reason we can't live in the real world while enjoying the doped up sport.Veganpotter12-04-2025
- Tadej definitely wasn't terribly out of the ordinary as a junior. Just goes to show what great coaching and a proper "supplement" regiment can turn someone into.Veganpotter12-04-2025
- Nice one. Not 100% officially a placebo but in my early days of group training in Mallorca I and another guy were reputed to ride without food (and once I paid the price for it having to be pushed back to base). On one particularly long outing things started getting difficult and the other guy mentioned he could really do with something to eat, one of the jokers offered him a home-wrapped snack, the latest nutritional supplement on the market and he started flying, showing and boasting all the way home how good he was feeling. At dinner, in front of 40 or so of his mates it was then revealed it had simply been a premeditated prank with a cheap doggy biscuit. Don’t know if anyone later ever considered experimenting with dogfood doping, was just happy not to have been selected as the victim.Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Veganpotter, I’d take that as a compliment, like not knowing how to manufacture a bomb :-)Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Most of us really overlook the reality of what happens physically when a bike tire goes over cobbles, we are too focused on experience, feeling and intuition to actually look at what should be a microscopic slow-motion analysis. I think it would help many to better imagine what is happening by comparing the situation to differing boat types advancing on wavy waters. You start with typical boats and play around with wave height and amplitude and then you progress onto more advanced designs, motorboats, catamarans, hovercraft, jetskis, gliders on different types of waves. Nce you can eliminate most of the wave and just skim the tops, the wave topography reduces to something minimal, this is the grail of bike design for cobbles, tough because no cobbled sector has exactly the same pattern. Does anyone know if wheel size is UCI regulated or is there a margin?Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Alsene, I tend to agree but it’s incredibly complicated to calculate who has what advantage in which particular situation as the variables are largely interrelated. As you note, the rolling resistance alone is affected by numerous criteria, all things equal it is easy to change one variable to determine whether the heavier or lighter rider has an advantage, however, when EVERY rider is free to play with ALL variables (tire pressure, bike stiffness, wheel seperation and dozens more), many of the advantages/disadvantages melt into a smaller overall a/d much harder to determine when there is not an enormous weight difference (we have riders from mid 50 - mid 90kg but most are much closer together). In the meantime each team has optimised the set-up for each rider so differences are nowhere near what they used to be 30-40 years ago but obviously there is and always will be some but without highly advanced scientific research (which no-one is likely to provide for free and investing teams will keep for themselves) I feel there is now little point in people like us trying to make any factor or point the determining one, none will ever outweigh the gains from drafting and strategy :-)Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Firstly, it’s not them, it’s their doctors and consultants and people contacting them trying to sell their wares. Secondly, now that there’s money in the sport, they can afford it, and peddlers see lucrative opportunities to separate them from their earnings, not very complicated to follow, in fact, wasn’t the whole modern thing started by someone having access to an oversized sponsor budget as there was a good marketing alignment of nationalistic and feelgood stories?Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Yeah, let’s just discuss important matters while the world goes to bits ;-) Enjoy your entertainment but stay responsible!Mistermaumau12-04-2025