"We had an end goal and we all stuck to the plan" - The key to win the Tour de France according to Jonas Vingegaard

Jumbo-Visma and Jonas Vingegaard's rise to Tour de France in 2022 will remain one of the highlights of the year, and the Dane has talked about his last months of the year in a recent interview where he further detailed the changes in his life.

“Sometimes I wake up and still wonder if I'm dreaming or if I've really won the Tour de France. I go out and check the yellow jersey… and it's still there. I have it at home, it's a good feeling," Vingegaard shared in an interview with BiciPro. A shy character, Vingegaard's post-Tour reception in Copenhagen was outstanding, and in the months following the Dane spent time with his family and away from the spotlight.

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This included time to rest properly both physically and mentally from such a brutal run-up and achievement, and then some more time to train back into competition which he's done at the CRO Race, and later at Il Lombardia where he didn't manage to have the form to contest the win, unlike Tadej Pogacar who stormed to the win in the streets of Como.

"Obviously things around me are different, but my life hasn't changed much," Vingegaard continued. "I still do the same things: I ride my bike, I go shopping, I live in the same village as 1,500 people who are always the same… It's different because now more people recognize me, for example, if I go to the airport."

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"But we are at home: we get up, we have breakfast quietly. I ride a bicycle while my partner and my daughter stay at home… Every now and then we take a sort of cargo bike that the sponsor has given us to go around," he details.

He has clearly valued this time after the Tour, specially as often Grand Tour contenders have to spend months away from home in competitions, training camps and at the Tour itself. However, it was all worth it, he says: "The best thing is that we raced as a team. We have so many talents in the team… We had an end goal and we all stuck to the plan. Wout [van Aert], for example, had the yellow jersey, but he gave up defending it to help me".

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The Dutch team managed to break Pogacar on stage 11 to the Col du Granon where he cracked spectacularly. Throughout the three weeks, Vingegaard was an unbreakable figure, despite several of his teammates succumbing to injuries throughout the race.

"I think the most difficult day was when we lost Steven [Kruijswijk] and Primoz [Roglic]," he reveals, referring to stage 15. "It was a very negative day, which had a certain weight. But then we had to keep fighting so our plan was to accept the situation and try to do our best and keep going. But other hard moments do not come to mind".

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