Tadej Pogacar's UAE teammate feared Jonas Vingegaard for Tour de France - "I thought it would be the closest Tour in many years"
Cycling
UAE Team Emirates - XRG and Tadej Pogacar arrived to the Tour de France confident of securing a record-equalling fifth yellow jersey. However, according to one UAE rider, Jonas Vingegaard was as dangerous as ever following his Giro d'Italia domination in May.
Pogacar's eternal Tour de France rival Vingegaard arrived at the Tour following a different approach to the season. After the Slovenian took comfortable victories in 2024 and 2025, Visma and the Dane opted for a Giro-Tour double.
Racing just Paris-Nice and Volta a Catalunya before his Giro tilt, Vingegaard appeared comfortable throughout his debut Giro, taking the pink jersey with ease and winning five stages on his way.
According to Mikkel Bjerg, who rode the Giro for UAE, he feared that the Dane was in his best shape in many years as he believed that the two would be set for a tightly-contested jostle for yellow in July.
"I had a feeling that this was the best Jonas we've ever seen," Bjerg said on Eurosport's Radio Tour.
Jonas Vingegaard
"I thought it would be the closest Tour in many years"
"Going into the Tour, I thought it would be the closest Tour in many years. It didn't quite turn out that way, but I definitely felt he had stepped up a level."
Of course, a three-week battle between the two didn't come to fruition as Pogacar took the yellow jersey for keeps on stage six, going solo on Col du Tourmalet before putting over 2:30 into Vingegaard and even more into the rest of the overall contenders.
Vingegaard kept things tighter in subsequent stages, but never dropped Pogacar before his team appeared to be teeing up an attack on stage 15 before the Dane's unfortunate crash before the day's mountain-top finish.
At the time, Vingegaard was 4:30 behind Pogacar, but had publicly expressed his desire to keep fighting for yellow - with the stage's finish at Plateau de Solaison understood to be a major goal for attempting to put Pogacar under pressure.
That fall saw him abandon the race with a broken collarbone. He underwent surgery before it was confirmed that the two-time winner's season was over.
Looking ahead to 2027, former Danish national coach and current Eurosport expert, Anders Lund, wants Vingegaard to keep the Tour de France as his main objective, but surround it with a far more ambitious one-day programme featuring Strade Bianche, the Ardennes Classics, the World Championships and Il Lombardia.
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“He needs to start racing one-day races,” Lund said on Eurosport.
“He needs a season where he really commits to it properly, instead of turning up under pressure once at Lombardia and failing, or once at the European Championships and failing there too.”
For a rider with Vingegaard’s stage-racing record, his one-day CV remains remarkably sparse. His best WorldTour Classic result is eighth at Clasica de San Sebastian in 2021, while his only one-day victory came at the Drome Classic in 2022.
He did not contest a one-day race in 2023. His only such start in 2024 came at San Sebastian, where he failed to finish, and his return to championship racing at the 2025 European Championships also ended in a DNF. He did not start a one-day race at all in 2026.
“It is a discipline he has not learned yet,” Lund said. “He should have the attributes for it, but he has not managed to make it work yet.”
Gavin QuinnCycling Journalist
Gavin Quinn is a cycling journalist and ultra-distance cyclist with a BA in Journalism from Dublin City University. Formerly the Press & Communications Officer for Cycling Ireland, Gavin has worked inside the national team at the World Championships and has reported for the Irish Mirror, Mirror UK, and The42.
His expertise is backed by elite-level access, having interviewed stars like Sam Bennett and Ben Healy, as well as immense personal endurance. In 2025, he completed a 12,000km solo cycle from Ireland to Vietnam, following a 4,600km tour across Europe. From the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix to the gradients of the Tourmalet, Gavin’s writing focuses on the "romance and brutality" of the sport. Having visited 50+ countries, he brings a global, cultural perspective to his coverage of the pro peloton for CyclingUpToDate.
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- Welcome to the off-season.
santiagobenites02-11-2026 - guillaume martin is wuite a surprise as a gc rider.Ketterechts02-11-2026
- Who cares what Bruyneel thinks. He and his best mate Lance, the biggest fraud in the history of sport, have no place commenting on anything but how to lie and cheat!whit2pet02-11-2026
- Eeesh!Lozza02-11-2026
- bravo! a rider likes jonas needs motivation and he needs to believe in being able to reach goals. he - like anybody else in the world - doesn't believe that he can win the tdf with pogi present. and what's it worth for when pogi is not there? second class victory only. he has checked all three grand tours, so what is left if not retire? the classics! go for it, jonas!Ketterechts02-11-2026
- i am sure that under the pretext of medical examination a lot worse has happened when they were under.abstractengineer02-11-2026
- dude, Lemond never even was in the same race as Armstrong. He throws all these aspersions on other American riders who might usurp his throne as the greatest ever American racer. He doesn't say a single thing about (foreign) dopers who he actually raced against. Biggest douchebag move ever. I used to revere that guy, now I despise him. His actions are so weird.fatsupermodel02-11-2026
- This is just stupid, You do what you are good at not what you are weak at. He has no results to speak of when he participated. Even Froome, Conatdor had very little. With Pogi there he wont win none of the classics. he is already 30+ with a few years left at the top. It takes years to get good at classics. Is that really worth the effort???abstractengineer02-11-2026
- Sure, little fella.awp02-11-2026
- You'll be the ongoing joke of 2027 with anything you post here!frieders302-11-2026
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