"Wout van Aert is a bit further ahead than Jonas Vingegaard" but both are in contention for Tour de France confirms Visma's Richard Plugge

How Team Visma | Lease a Bike will look at this summer's Tour de France is still something that is very much up in the air. After a spring that saw the team decimated with injuries, two of their biggest stars, Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard face a race against time to be fit for the Tour.

"Wout is a bit further ahead than Jonas. They are cycling again. Wout already more than Jonas," Team Visma | Lease a Bike boss Richard Plugge assesses of his superstar duos condition in an extensive interview with HLN. "Initially it was important for them to become healthy again. Now I'm happy they can do some things physically. Afterwards, they can think about when they will become athletes again. Only afterwards can we talk about a schedule."

After van Aert's Giro d'Italia debut was postponed following a crash at Dwars Door Vlaanderen that left the Belgian with a fractured collarbone, fractured rib(s) and a fractured sternum, Vingegaard went down hard in a crash at the Itzulia Basque Country, suffering a fractured collarbone, fractured rib(s) and most worryingly, a pneumothorax. "The way things are going now, in a week or two we can talk to them again as an athlete," Plugge says optimistically however. "With Wout, we have to see how we can plan the next week. As far as Jonas is concerned, the Tour is not out of the question for us."

After taking victory at the last two editions of the Tour de France though, Vingegaard won't be coming in as just an also-ran. "We will only go to the Tour with Jonas if he is 100 per cent," Plugge insists. "He is someone who picks it up quickly and is staggeringly talented. In a maximum of two weeks we will know the answer to whether the Tour is feasible. Not before. I still have high hopes for it."

According to Plugge, the reintroduction of van Aert and Vingegaard to the peloton, will not only make Team Visma | Lease a Bike stronger, but cycling as a whole. "With all due respect, it's great how Tadej Pogacar won Liège, but you were missing riders of his calibre who could make it difficult for him. For cycling, that has been a tragedy," he explains. "It didn't help any team that we sat and watched a monument three times where a rider rides away at forty or seventy kilometres before the end and rides to the finish on his own. Without Wout or Remco or Primoz or Jonas giving them a hard time."

"People want to see spectacle," Plugge concludes. "Forty-kilometre solos are nice once, but I think all the fans would prefer to see the battle until the last moment. I do think about that, because this was hugely damaging for cycling."