"Smells a little bit like panic" - Danish expert questions Jonas Vingegaard’s "unprepared" emergency Tour de France domestique

Davide Piganzoli’s late call-up to Team Visma | Lease a Bike’s Tour de France squad has raised questions in Denmark, with Eurosport cycling expert Anders Lund admitting the decision caught him by surprise.

The Italian was confirmed as the final rider in Jonas Vingegaard’s Tour support squad after Wout van Aert was ruled out, adding another reshuffle to a Visma selection already affected by earlier injury problems around riders including Christophe Laporte.

Piganzoli gives Vingegaard another high-mountain option, but the timing of the call has sharpened the debate around Visma’s final Tour line-up.

Piganzoli rode the Giro d’Italia earlier this season, helping Vingegaard to overall victory while also finishing eighth himself. His strength in the final week made him one of the revelations of Visma’s Giro campaign, but it also means he arrives at the Tour after a demanding three-week race that was not originally expected to be followed by another Grand Tour start.

Lund, a former Danish national coach and now a Eurosport cycling expert, did not hide his surprise after Piganzoli was named in the squad ahead of riders including Ben Tulett. “I would say it is a genuine surprise. I did not see that one coming,” Lund said.

The biggest question came from Piganzoli’s own admission during Visma’s team presentation that he had only been told a few days earlier that he would ride the Tour. For Lund, that detail made the selection feel less like a long-prepared plan and more like a late response to Visma’s disrupted build-up.

“It does not seem as if it was always the plan for Piganzoli to ride the Tour. If he only found out a few days ago, then it seems a little unprepared,” he said. “Those kinds of last-minute decisions can easily be right, but they also smell a little bit like panic at the last moment.”

Piganzoli’s level is not the obvious concern. At the Giro, he proved he could survive deep into the mountains while still carrying his own general classification ambitions. He worked late into decisive stages for Visma and still finished inside the top 10 overall.

The uncertainty is whether that same Giro effort leaves enough margin for July. Lund pointed to the difference between riders who had built their entire season around the Tour and a rider now being asked to double up quickly after already going deep in Italy. “There is uncertainty around him because he rode the Giro in a different way from the riders who knew all along that the Tour was waiting afterwards,” Lund said.

Visma’s selection has been shaped by absences. Van Aert’s withdrawal removed one of the team’s most versatile riders, while Laporte’s injury-disrupted build-up had already changed the support structure Vingegaard might once have expected around him.

Piganzoli’s Giro performance explains why Visma would trust him in the mountains. His late call-up explains why the decision has raised eyebrows from the outside.

Lund did leave room for the possibility that Visma’s internal numbers tell a far more reassuring story than the public timeline suggests. “There could easily be something that makes this decision the most obvious one of all. It is just not always knowledge you can share with the outside world,” he said. “From the outside it seems surprising, but internally at Visma it could easily be a no-brainer. They have a completely different amount of data than we have access to.”

Piganzoli may yet prove to be an inspired late addition, especially if his Giro climbing form carries through into the Tour’s hardest days. But with Vingegaard preparing for another direct battle with Tadej Pogacar, Visma’s final selection has added one more point of intrigue to a campaign already shaped by absences, late changes and pressure.