"Unfortunately, Jonas had a couple of bad days" - Vingegaard's teammate pinpoints exactly where Visma's Tour de France tactics went wrong

In the final GC standings of the 2025 Tour de France, the 4:24 gap between Maillot Jaune Tadej Pogacar and runner-up Jonas Vingegaard doesn't fully tell the story of the race. For the most part, the two storied rivals looked evenly matched. Sadly for Vingegaard however, a couple of days really cost him, as seen first hand by his Team Visma | Lease a Bike teammate Edoardo Affini.

After 6 Giro d'Italias and 2 Vuelta a Espanas, European time trial champion Affini was making a long-awaited Tour de France debut this summer. “The media exposure, the crowds, the whole circus... the Tour has a much bigger echo chamber. Maybe it’s the time of year — it’s July, people are on holiday. Maybe it’s just that they’re better at telling the story. Whatever the reason, there’s a lot more attention from the press and people within the sport," the Italian tells Bici.Pro about the differences that set the Tour apart. "At the Giro, you have outlets that follow cycling year-round. At the Tour, even those who don’t normally know cycling exists suddenly show up.”

That in turn means more pressure on the riders in the peloton. "At the Giro we aimed to go for GC, but it was more of a work in progress. We didn’t really know what that would look like — we built it day by day," Affini says of Visma's expectations. "At the Tour, we knew right from the start that it was between Tadej and Jonas. Sure, you could throw Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic into the mix, but realistically it was about those two.”

"It wasn’t just stress. Knowing you’re working for someone who’s fighting to win the Tour gives you a real drive," Affini adds. "From the very start, there was much more focus on staying up front and protecting Vingegaard, always staying alert.”

Team Visma | Lease a Bike's tactics at the 2025 Tour de France caused much debate in the cycling world. Relentless aggressive over the relatively flat opening week, Visma attempted to put constant pressure on Pogacar. By the time the race reached the high mountains however, Visma themselves seemed to have been burned out by their own pace-setting.

When asked about Visma's plan, Affini replies: "That’s hard to pin down. It’s not like there was one specific masterplan. You know how it goes in interviews — sometimes it’s psychological too. What I can say is we always tried to race our race with the ideas we had and discussed daily on the team bus. We did everything to put him (Pogacar) — and them (UAE) — under pressure, hoping a door might open somewhere," he explains. "But in the end, it never really did. Both Tadej and his team were rock solid. At a certain point, when it was just the two of them facing off, the team dynamic only mattered so much.”

And as mentioned, whilst Vingegaard and Pogacar were evenly matched when pitted against each other for the most part, two bad days proved really costly for the Visma leading Dane. "Jonas tried several times, but he never really managed to crack him," analyses Affini. "Unfortunately, Jonas had a couple of bad days too — especially the first time trial and then on Hautacam. Those two stages gave Tadej his margin. If you add it up — 1’28” lost in the Caen time trial and 2’10” on Hautacam — it pretty much explains Vingegaard’s deficit to Pogacar.”

“They were both running on fumes by the end. It was the fastest Tour in history, and that says a lot," concludes Affini, admitting that Visma's tactics not only tired Pogacar, but Vingegaard himself. "Every day at the start we’d say: 'Today they’ve got to be tired, surely it won’t start like yesterday' But instead, every single day was faster. We conjugated the verb to explode in every tense possible — bold, caps, underlined!"