"Jonas Vingegaard should never have won a Tour, given the difference in class to Tadej Pogacar" - Jose de Cauwer's harsh assessment of Visma leader

If Tadej hadn't had that mechanical on stage 7 of the 2020 Tour he would have been in the lead earlier.

Really??? How do you know he wouldn’t have crashed and abandoned? You can’t use ifs to prove certainties. If one little thing had changed in history, there’d be no America or it’d be German or there’d never have been humans to cycle or we’d have continued with electric cars 130 years ago. If Jonas hadn’t waited when Tadej crashed in 2022 he might also not have won. You can regret things didn’t go the way you wanted but you’ll never know how they would have gone if you change ANY detail. We have all escaped death or disaster by seconds or minutes or a complete turn in events at some point in life and would do well to remind ourselves of it when contemplating possible outcomes.

It's not a certainty but he would have been far ahead if not for that mechanical based on the outcome that we saw unfold. If I'm not mistaken he only lost a little time on one mountain stage after that issue but regained it, I can't remember which stages though. I'd have to look up the stage data. Although I'm sitting here with a viral sinus infection today, so I might go look it up since I'm not doing much else lol

Firstly, hope you recover promptly. No need to do any checking as it’s a hypothetical discussion. Another reason you can’t just add the if that suits your argument is that you then have to factor in everyone else’s ifs for theirs. What if Kwiat hadn’t crashed with Dumoulin on stage 3 when Visma were on the attack. What if Visma’s had changed strategy earlier with a more dangerous Tadej, how would Tadej have fared or ridden if he had led earlier? Primoz is an excellent time trialer, especially with such a climb, it wasn’t to be expected Tadej could knock off 2 minutes on him and the best back then, even he couldn’t have known he’d manage. Until then they’d been very well matched, Primoz still managed to extend his lead somewhat just before the TT. I guess he may have paid a price for it that day?

Interesting that you compare van Aert and van der Poel, when the crazy fact is that Pogacar is the main rival in Monument wins for van der Poel, while also being the main rival in the Tour for Vingegaard. I wish van Aert were more successful, but sadly he's won the single Monument and his injuries lately, ay yay yay, I miss his health!

I just used those two as an example of a sport rivalry, could have chosen any other sport but expected people would understand better if I stayed in cycling. That said, you seem to have misinterpreted what I tried to imply or missed that rivalry altogether. Before those two started turning heads on the road, they have a far more interesting and very long relationship in xc. WVA has paid a heavy price for the move to road cycling but he did put up some amazing performances when things were going right, very often taking one for the team which obviously doesn’t show in statistics. Real fans of cycling remember more than just results.

Yes he had a great tt on stage 16 and he put mega time into Tadej on stage 17.

It was no surprise really, we know from enough experience that Jonas recovers better and with a rest day that may have made a bigger difference. We also know that once you can tell a rider is tired you know he’s going to underperform significantly when under pressure often leading to cracking (paying the price for riding a tempo you can’t sustain on that day) so it wasn’t exactly clairvoyance if he knew he’d be able to recover and ride “normally”.

Yes and also don't forget that Tadej is about o years younger the Jonas and was technically still developing. It's a funny thing to say but it's true. Remco is still developing to as he's currently 25 until the 25th of January. Age does play a part, either good or bad.