"Tadej Pogacar has his style, I have mine. But it does bother me sometimes when we are portrayed as 'calculated'" - Jonas Vingegaard honest on comparisons to world champion

The rivalry between Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard has defined a generation in the sport of cycling. With the pair having distinctly different styles, both on the bike and off, comparisons between the two are often guaranteed to cause debate amongst fans. In a recent interview, Vingegaard himself addressed the differences between himself and the current world champion.

In conversation with with José De Cauwer for Het Nieuwsblad, Vingegaard is honest about his feelings towards the comparisons with Pogacar. "Tadej has his style, I have mine. But it does bother me sometimes when we are portrayed as 'calculated'," the Dane explains, noting the slightly different view fans have of the Team Visma | Lease a Bike train and the UAE Team Emirates - XRG block. "I understand that it looks like that in the Tour de France and we always say ourselves 'we have a plan'. But sometimes we really do things on intuition."

Vingegaard even has a notable example on hand to call back to, from the 2023 Tour de France. "In the stage to Marie Blanc, it was said in advance that we would only follow and certainly not attack," the two-time Maillot Jaune winner remembers fondly. "But in the end we felt that Pogacar was at his limit and we changed everything."

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Another iconic day in recent Grand Tour memory that saw Vingegaard get the better of Pogacar, came with his famous individual time trial win at the 2023 Tour de France on stage 16. A performance that all but officially confirmed the Dane's second successive Maillot Jaune win. "I have never had a better feeling on the bike," recalls Vingegaard. "That day everything went perfectly. Every bend in the descent, every pedal stroke uphill. I thought my power meter was broken."

As De Cauwer notes, this can also be viewed as a day when Vingegaard and Team Visma | Lease a Bike weren't the cold and calculated operators some might view them as. "To put it this way: if your legs hurt and you don't reach your watts, then you can indeed block. But it is also a misconception that in a time trial we write down numbers in advance that we will or will not reach," the experienced Belgian cycling expert assesses. "People sometimes think that we are robots, but a time trial always involves 'feeling'."

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