"Tadej never gets surprised" - Victor Campenaerts led Visma's charge to try and explode Pogacar into Rouen

On the hilly and incredibly technical finale of stage 4 at the Tour de France Team Visma | Lease a Bike hit the front late but in perfect time. Victor Campenaerts did an astounding leadout towards the final climb which split the remaining peloton to bits, but once again the Dutch team was not able to surprise a ready Tadej Pogacar who closely followed the lightning-fast approach into the steep ascent to Saint-Hilaire.

"It was a circuit designed for racing, we were joking a bit with Wout before the race that when you looked on the map, it looked like a cyclocross parcours," Campenaerts said in a post-race interview with Eurosport. So a plan was designed to save as much as possible into the final kilometers - and not play into the early positioning as much as in previous days - and then hit the front late on and hard.

"Going into the technical downhills and final climb, we knew it would be nice to lead and we did so, for sure that put some pressure on the other guys, but Tadej never gets surprised."

Visma's work did not go unsuccessful taking into consideration that riders such as Florian Lipowitz and Felix Gall were dropped before the climb even began, but behind the Dutch train was the World Champion and his right-hand men who then prepared his attack on the final climb. Nevertheless Visma attempted on one more occasion to attack Pogacar outside the mountains, trying to gain time before the Tour enters it's decisive stages.

"We executed the plan that we wanted to, but this parcours is maybe more suited to Tadej than Jonas, but that doesn't mean we give him a free ticket. We tried to put pressure on him, we did, he won, Jonas was third, so in the end that's OK for us," the Belgian adds.

He anticipates the time-trial with a lot of eagerness and positivity that the Dane will be able to put up a great fight against the Slovenian in Caen. "Jonas is going so well on the time trial bike, and at altitude, he spent a lot of hours on it. And chapeau to that. I would say this parcours is perhaps more suitable to somebody with higher absolute Watts, which is Tadej, because he is heavier. So he has to produce higher Watts, and on a super-flat course like this, you would say it's in his favour. But, I will be very curious to see."