"We won the battle today, but we didn't win the Tour de France" - Visma DS calms down the excitement after Jonas Vingegaard's stage win

Reason to celebrate at Visma | Lease a Bike on Wednesday. So far, we still weren't sure whether Jonas Vingegaard could defeat Tadej Pogacar, but on the stage to Le Lioran - he did it. This bring only cosmetic changes to the general classification, however the moral boost for the Dane, as well as the whole team, can't be described in numbers.

"It's really impressive, because he knew he was 35 seconds behind at the foot of the Col de Pertus and he came back little by little, he always believed in himself, hats off to him," said sports director Grischa Niermann at the finish. "I think it's a great psychological advantage, but it must also be said that Pogacar still has a 1'14" lead in the general classification. It's a lot, but there are still many stages to come. We won the battle today, but we didn't win the Tour de France."

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"We are really emotional for Jonas. He has had a very difficult time, but he is back and he showed it today," he continued. "We did not expect to win the stage, we hoped before the stage that he could follow Pogacar when he was going to attack. He could not follow this attack, but he came back and even won the stage, it is incredible."

Still third in the general classifcation, Vingegaard now significantly reduced his gap to second Remco Evenepoel, who has only a tight advantage of 8 seconds. The gap to Pogacar only moved by one second, but the most important is the confidence the Dane now carries into the weekend stages.

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