Jonas Vingegaard crashes after Mont Ventoux finish: "Some photographer just ran straight out in front of me"

The Mont Ventoux is a legendary climb at the Tour de France and today it has delivered once again. Whilst the battle for the stage win was in the breakaway, Jonas Vingegaard and Team Visma | Lease a Bike brought the race to Tadej Pogacar and put the Slovenian under pressure on what may have been the most explosive climb of the race so far.

Visma placed Tiesj Benoot and Victor Campenaerts in the day's breakaway, and as soon as the peloton hit the base of the final 21-kilometer long ascent, Wout van Aert hit the front. The team, mostly through the brilliant work of Sepp Kuss, worked to destroy the GC group and with a long way to go (still around 8 kilometers to the finish in that group) Jonas Vingegaard launched his first attack, which was only followed by Pogacar himself. "I was feeling very good today, happy with the feeling today and happy with the attacks I tried to do. Of course I didn't get any time today but I take motivation," the Dane said in a pst-race interview.

Later on he bridged across to both Benoot and Campenaerts who helped him in his aggressive tactics. "We wanted to have someone in the break and the team did really amazing today, everyone worked with everything they had. It was really commitment from everybody and everyone was doing super great so thank you to all my teammates".

Vingegaard attacked the climb on several occasions, a brutal pace which not even Pogacar was comfortable following. The Slovenian tried to make the difference inside the final 2 kilometer but Vingegaard showed a level that is superior to that of previous summit finishes.

"He followed me every time he attacked me, and I followed him when he attacked. I don't think I could see any weaknesses but at least it gives me some motivation how good I felt today so as I said I will keep trying".

At the finish line Pogacar won 2 seconds at the finish line but this will prove to be insignificant in the big picture of the race. Vingegaard can only realistically aim for the GC win if Pogacar cracks, but today's stalemate is a motivating point in his advantage.

Vingegaard also revealed that after the finish line, he went down after getting hit by a photographer. "Some photographer just ran straight out in front of me after the finish line, I don't know what he was doing. I went down, I think people in the finish area they should use their eyes a bit more". How big the consequences may be is a question to be answered this Wednesday morning most likely.