"They're facing a phenomenon like only happens once every 50 years” – Bakelants analyses Visma and Vingegaard’s Tour de France

Wout van Aert delivered a dramatic conclusion to the 2025 Tour de France by dropping Tadej Pogacar and winning the final stage in Paris. His triumph offered a moment of celebration for Team Visma | Lease a Bike, who also took a stage win through Simon Yates on stage 10 of the race. But the team's ambitions for the general classification fell short, as they did in 2024. Jonas Vingegaard never truly challenged Pogacar, who once again proved unshakable over three weeks.

"We don't need to overdramatize it," Jan Bakelants said in his review for Sporza. "Vingegaard is still the second-best rider in this Tour. Many riders would sign up to be runner-up just once. You can still dream of turning things around. He needs to keep working hard, keep doing what he's doing."

Vingegaard's chances were undone on two specific days: the stage 5 time trial and the stage to Hautacam. Outside of those setbacks, the Dane held his ground, despite never troubling his Slovenian rival. Bakelants believes those were decisive moments, but not necessarily ones the team could have planned around.

"Not much, surprisingly enough," he said when asked what Visma could have done differently. "They're facing a phenomenon like only happens once every 50 years. Or maybe even longer. They pulled out all the stops, but it didn't work out. I don't think we would have gotten a different outcome if Visma | Lease a Bike had done anything differently."

There were still some reflections on how to improve, as Visma seemed to spend a lot of energy before they even made it to the mountains. "Perhaps a slightly better balance needs to be found between his explosiveness and long-term climbing ability," Bakelants added. "And perhaps they should hope that Pogacar suffers a setback at some point. In that respect, Vingegaard hasn't been spared in recent years. That would explain part of the gap."