- Sep 20, 2017
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Unless people drop away like Roglic, Ayuso and Landa last year, he will be up against stronger competition this time. And San Valentino was a bit of an outlier for him within that race.
Jonas is warming up but he faded and almost got chased back today by a Felix Gall and Bora's previous Giro winner was much closer than anyone in JV's fandom would have wanted. Gall and Hindley.....not the front line Jonas will face in the Tour. Much of his competition crashed out in Hungary so he's getting an easy intro to this year's Giro. Too early to be dissing the competition Vindegaard has conspicuously avoided this season.
Cookster15
Moderator
- May 14, 2011
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Congrats to Jonas, seems like more or less as expected? Best ride I’ve noticed by Felix Gall since the 2023 Tour ?
Home town young gun Pellizzari tried but holding Vingo’s wheel likely cost him best of RBH.
Home town young gun Pellizzari tried but holding Vingo’s wheel likely cost him best of RBH.
- Jul 31, 2024
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Not really. I doubt Gall will hold. And first place always out of reach to begin with. Today just confirmed that. Nothing happened today that jeopardised a podium
- Sep 7, 2010
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Avoiding how exactly?
What specific races do you have in mind that this tiny 58kg stage-race rider should be going for, so he aint dissing or avoiding, according to your view ??
Taking 4 grand tours back to back 25/26, is pretty hardcore, and his 2026 calendar was official like half a year back without any big surprises, so I really dont follow your logic?
He seems to be the one who is showing the appetite for the more demanding mountainous races, and he was certainly impressive throughout Marts
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- Apr 8, 2023
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By "taking" 4 grand tours back to back 25/26; do you mean winning? There are guys smaller than him competing throughout the year against the most serious competition. Point here is that he's been racing in very favorable levels of competition. He's been great this year but today pointed out the level of his preparedness. It's normal for a good GT athlete to ramp up his strength for a target event and, hopefully; arrive there at his best. We're not seeing it yet and there is not much to suggest his adversaries aren't both increasing in number but also in strength. Not gonna be easy.
But that does not mean he has been avoiding competition. He has ridden two WorldTour-level stage races. It is not his fault that Pog prefers the Monuments, Almeida got sick, and Ayuso got injured and so on. He has not been avoiding.
It should also be said that he could go to Liège, Lombardi, and the World Championships more often. Many GT drivers have gone to those races. Contador and Froome went to World Championships.
Vingegaard is about to turn 30 and hasn't gone to a World Championship, which is also unusual.
Jonas and Visma with the expected stage win. They did everything right. But it was only possible because of Bahrain and Red Bull. In the end he actually had too few helpers for the conditions.
Why did Bahrain chase the breakaway so hard? Sure, with the team leader you ride at the front, but you don’t have to ride that fast. Because of that, the stage win became possible for Jonas. Otherwise, with the wind, he might have only attacked later and gained less time. And what was RBH doing? Why ride tempo there? Yes, they have two possible riders for the podium. And some hoped Giulio might be able to put Jonas under pressure. But why put so much pressure on him? Let Visma ride. That would have been difficult for them in that wind. Instead, Jonas had slipstream from two riders, while Jai and Giulio were always exposed on the edge and in the wind without helpers. Felix still had Gregor, who gave him a long slipstream.
Once again, a strange tactic.
Giulio burned himself a bit. A shame for the suspense, but I like it when riders take risks and try to win instead of immediately riding for second place.
Visma and Jonas now have a win, which takes off pressure. And no jersey, because he surely wants to ride the TT in the team kit. Felix is still close, but he will lose a lot in the time trial. Unfortunately, the others behind him will too, and they already have a minute. So today everyone played into Jonas’ hands. He looks superior, but not as much as expected. But definitely enough. And then the competition even helps him.
Why did Bahrain chase the breakaway so hard? Sure, with the team leader you ride at the front, but you don’t have to ride that fast. Because of that, the stage win became possible for Jonas. Otherwise, with the wind, he might have only attacked later and gained less time. And what was RBH doing? Why ride tempo there? Yes, they have two possible riders for the podium. And some hoped Giulio might be able to put Jonas under pressure. But why put so much pressure on him? Let Visma ride. That would have been difficult for them in that wind. Instead, Jonas had slipstream from two riders, while Jai and Giulio were always exposed on the edge and in the wind without helpers. Felix still had Gregor, who gave him a long slipstream.
Once again, a strange tactic.
Giulio burned himself a bit. A shame for the suspense, but I like it when riders take risks and try to win instead of immediately riding for second place.
Visma and Jonas now have a win, which takes off pressure. And no jersey, because he surely wants to ride the TT in the team kit. Felix is still close, but he will lose a lot in the time trial. Unfortunately, the others behind him will too, and they already have a minute. So today everyone played into Jonas’ hands. He looks superior, but not as much as expected. But definitely enough. And then the competition even helps him.
To me it looked like he was even struggling to drop Pellizzari and was already pulling faces beforehand
Yes he has. He rode them well but strategy was fairly easy. Equating those winds into dominance against Pogacar, as some have suggested is pure fanvision. He had team support halfway up Blockhaus and still had serious competition. He looked taxed at the end but should be better with rest.
Remember the stage was super long, he has the tour to think of, and he doesn’t need to go full gas, Pog was doing the same at Romandie more or less.
My theory is that Jonas is not as effective in 200km stages. he only has one win in a 200km+ stage in a GT. He'll do better in the shorter stages.
- Feb 20, 2012
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I remember looking into this recently and IIRC Pogacar never dropped Vingegaard on a 200km+ stage in the Tour (or it was once and it was on Puy Mary which is the stage 2 years ago that Vingegaard won).
We know he is awful in one day races which are nearly always 200+ kms. The relevance of my post is that I am confident that he will be more dominant in shorter mountain stages at the Giro.
- Jul 7, 2013
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The sample of 200+ km mountain stages at the Tour is too small for any conclusions. While I do think the disproportion of Jonas' results between stage-racing and long classics is too big to be explained just by timing/form changes across the season (maybe he's lacking something in long hilly races), long mountain stages is a different beast (due to his natural w/kg advantage on long climbs).
- Feb 20, 2012
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- Jul 7, 2013
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Depend what kind of races. I wouldn't expect Jonas to be that good on Amstel like parcours (a lot of vertical meters there). Liege like races are definitely much better for him. Let's just say I'm not convinced he would be as good in Liege as in stage-races: i.e. by far the best of all guys not named Pogacar.
- Feb 20, 2012
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I don't know either, but in my view distance is too often the easy throwaway explanation why some riders haven't had good result in monuments.
I would be more inclined to blame distance if his limited one day results were significantly better in the regular ones than in monument length ones, and they're not.
He had semi competent results in 2021 when his form was questionable (he was really inconsistent outside of GTs at that point) and he was working for Roglic in 2021, then gets 16th in 2022 after struggling to beat some middle school rider in Croatia uphill finishes and even then only gets 16th because he blew up completely trying to follow Pogacar.
- Jul 7, 2013
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I think we had this conversation regarding 2021 before: he was just after runner-up in Itzulia (his breakthrough performance) so the form was there. His LBL was much better than Amstel & Fleche but still the divergence (compared to Itzulia) looked too big.
- Feb 20, 2012
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