Jonas Vingegaard: "I already did something for Wout. I could have thought of myself and rolled with Pogacar"

The tactics of Jumbo-Visma through the opening weekend of the Tour de France was perhaps the greatest topic of discussion, a lot of it revolving around how Jonas Vingegaard should have raced. Many different and vocal opinions have emerged, but the defending champion has explained his tactics.

"I think I already did something for Wout. I could have thought of myself and rolled with Pogacar. So in a way, I helped by not relaying Pogacar," Vingegaard told AD. "From my side, I just have to focus on the general classification. Of course, we have different objectives and we are all disappointed, so am I, we really wanted Wout to win today."

The second day of racing saw once again Jumbo on the backfoot and chasing down late attacks. Unlike stage 1 however, the run-in to San Sebastián was not as hard and saw a larger group head into the finish, where Tiesj Benoot and Wilco Kelderman worked to bring back a few attacks in the final kilometers, with Wout van Aert himself responding to moves from Tom Pidcock and Mattias Skjelmose. This was all after Tadej Pogacar attacked on the Jaizkibel, a move that was shut down as Jonas Vingegaard did not want to collaborate.

The Dane believes that even if indirectly, his lack of collaboration for Pogacar was already an important support step for Wout van Aert's chances of winning the stage. Criticism surged over him not having ridden for van Aert in the finale, where the Belgian came up very short of the stage win as the team couldn't bring back the late move from Victor Lafay. This sees Jumbo-Visma under a bit of pressure as van Aert chases his stage win, and the team has been burning resources without success for that purpose.