Jonas Vingegaard's coach confident of recovery ahead of Tour de France: "There is no one who can improve as quickly as he can"

Jonas has had quite a few injuries. He broke his femur in 2017, had a bad concussion in 2018, had a foot injury in 2022 and now he's recovering from these injuries. He was also known as being quite crash-prone before 2022, so I am sure he has had many small injuries over the years. So yes, he has had to recover from significant injuries before. But I also think they mean recovering as in recovering throughout the three weeks of a GT. That's his real superpower. It just generally seems like it takes a lot for Jonas to lose form. I think it is all tied to his consistency as well. I can barely remember the last time Jonas exploded during a stage. His bad days usually consist of losing 10 seconds to Pogacar. I don't think it's paradoxical at all. Jonas' strengths are recovery and consistency. None of that is helpful in one-day races. He doesn't prepare for the TdF without risk. He still rides multiple one-week races. He rides from February to October. Last year, he had more race days than most of his close competitors including Tadej and Primoz. He had as many race days as Remco. It is not a strategy. All of this was known about Jonas long before he joined Visma. It is a skill he has. It is even mentioned in the Netflix documentary. Plugge says something along the lines of: "Jonas is one of those guys where we say he just has to see his bike and he rides fast. He doesn't have to train."

Didn't know JV has so many injury records. It is a miracle he is still competing at all. Anyone else with that injury record would have retired after a heavy crash. Hope he skip TDF and try and be ready for Vuelta. Don't go to TDF when you aren't 100% physically and mentally

Fair enough, don’t get me wrong. When I said without risk, it was in the context of everything being part of the plan for building up to the Tour, he doesn’t try anything else before that isn’t compatible. Also before 2021 he was certainly not at the level he reached since so the recovery was less crucial. Yes he’s had serious injuries but even without considering the different goals then and now and the timing, none of them compare to the muscle* and condition loss that the latest injuries will have caused. He’s shown he’s incredibly adaptable in many ways (e.g. his time trialing improved so much so quickly) so I wouldn’t be surprised if he managed but then it would make a bit of a mockery of all the “no time” warnings the team gave. Unlike normal people, could it be that athletes can use muscle stimulating devices during their stays in hospital to keep a minimum of muscle instead of wasting away?