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Jonas Vingegaard: Godzilla, the King of Monsters

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Yup, 2000 m/h isn't super impressive but still better than 1900 m/h. The Vuelta level isn't Tour level, that's for sure. I think Vinge and Pog in Tour form would be minutes ahead of the rest (at least before Pog's collapse).
Vingegaard did today 6.95/7 w/kg. We already saw him do 7.2/7.3 w/kg in 10 to 13 minutes. Clearly he is not in his best shape, but it's enough to be competitive.
 
The main reason I don't like him is he was a nobody with an unremarkable palmeres before July 2021. His main claim to fame was a MTF win in the Tour of Poland - but nothing to suggest what we have seen since July 2021.

I noticed in Wiki the comment "When he became a senior rider, he initially struggled and performed poorly in races". He was 18 then. If this is true, I don't see how any athlete with a claimed 103 Vo2 Max (one explanation provided for his TdF TT) would have performed "poorly"?

Jumbo's PR team have managed the fallout of a nobody pushing Pogacar in the 2021 TdF. Now that danger period of suspicion has passed it seems they are upping the ante. Riders like Roglic and now Kuss are being tossed aside as cannon fodder for a super responding beast. Yes I know the Vuelta's level is lower than the Tour but ....

JV should aim for the impossible next year: The Giro Tour double. That would at least give us something to hope for (that he might actually collapse).
he's froome 2.0
the similarities are striking. Like i posted in his thread
from nowhere
coming out party as vuelta domestique
climbs and TTs
1 day races are for poseurs
wife in charge
superteam at forefront of preparation tech

edit-have to admit i dont see him hanging on past his expiry date and making youtubes selling bike computer mounts
 
I’m confused. I see a lot here that he is not in Tour shape and that he pushed 6.9w/kg, but he said after the stage that he is in Tour shape and LR estimates 7.4 w/kg and the second top 5 career climbing performance of the Vuelta for him. Can someone reconcile?
The guy who does the watts calculations for LR, Naichaca, is known to a) estimate high and b) have his favourite riders that always seem to get favourable results (random headwinds, over or under-exaggerated draft effects, etc.). That being said, his form curve is definitely going up during the Vuelta - but not quite at Tour level yet.

He did similar watts today (~6.9 w/kg) as on the steep part of Marie-Blanque - but that was for longer, after a much harder stage, and he still needed to do the descent and then drive the flat hard to the line. So the assumption is that he’s slightly under that form.
 
The guy who does the watts calculations for LR, Naichaca, is known to a) estimate high and b) have his favourite riders that always seem to get favourable results (random headwinds, over or under-exaggerated draft effects, etc.). That being said, his form curve is definitely going up during the Vuelta - but not quite at Tour level yet.

He did similar watts today (~6.9 w/kg) as on the steep part of Marie-Blanque - but that was for longer, after a much harder stage, and he still needed to do the descent and then drive the flat hard to the line. So the assumption is that he’s slightly under that form.
Thanks. That is a huge discrepancy. Also, these are all his estimates, so his inflation should be consistent at least, implying these are in fact top 5 performances for Vingegaard, unless he a) inflated performances at that time, then deflated them when using as basis for comparison to new performances, which would be odd, b) for some reason is inflating Vuelta numbers more than previous c) has some sort of flaw in his calculation that benefits these Vuelta climbs d) changed the way he calculates for the Vuelta e) ?

 
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He was cr*pping himself behind a Spanish roadside bush in the first week of the Vuelta. It reminds me of Annemiek van Vleuten during the TdF Femmes (avec Zwift!) 2022 where she was also completely rinsed in the first few days of the race... & taking trips into the bushes, before unleashing those mega watts which demolished the race.

Makes me wonder whether this is coincidental or there's something in the 'preparation' which can upset the digestive system in the first part of a race before getting those Dragon Ball Z powers later on.

I still think a form of traditional clinical methods are being deployed here (no motorized bike nonsense), i.e. simply perfected for the modern era.
 
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Thanks. That is a huge discrepancy. Also, these are all his estimates, so his inflation should be consistent at least, implying these are in fact top 5 performances for Vingegaard, unless he a) inflated performances at that time, then deflated them when using as basis for comparison to new performances, which would be odd, b) for some reason is inflating Vuelta numbers more than previous c) has some sort of flaw in his calculation that benefits these Vuelta climbs d) changed the way he calculates for the Vuelta e) ?

True, in theory it would all be equal relatively speaking. But in comparison to general consensus watts estimations (ammattipyöräily is generally seen as most reliable by those on this forum, in my experience), he varies by 0.1 up to even 0.5 w/kg higher.

What exactly the cause is I’m not sure, but it’s probably something in his formula (as well as the aforementioned favouritism). Off the top of my head I think the discrepancy is generally higher on steeper gradients, with very uneven climbs usually having the highest discrepancy.
 
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"maybe the greatest cycling team of all time", Christian Vande Velde just now about Jumbo.

You can't make this up....and this American feed is horrendous.
Jumbo has two riders capable of winning the TDF, but only one that has.

Postal/Discovery did win 7 with Lance, and Landis won 1 and Hamilton probably was good enough to win one. (I know they really didn't win any, but this is the clinic)

My money is still on Sky. Winning the TDF 6 of 7 years in a row (with Froome crashing out in 2014), but most impressive is doing it with 4 different riders (Wiggo, Froome, G, and Bernal). As I mentioned, Postal was close to having the same depth, but Sky was the best.
 
Jumbo has two riders capable of winning the TDF, but only one that has.

Postal/Discovery did win 7 with Lance, and Landis won 1 and Hamilton probably was good enough to win one. (I know they really didn't win any, but this is the clinic)

My money is still on Sky. Winning the TDF 6 of 7 years in a row (with Froome crashing out in 2014), but most impressive is doing it with 4 different riders (Wiggo, Froome, G, and Bernal). As I mentioned, Postal was close to having the same depth, but Sky was the best.
Well Christian was on the Postal program and knows exactly how they bought and paid for their dominance. Sky was a milder version of the same.
JV at least has had Pogacar and Remco to race against so the optics aren't as ripe from the conspiracy side of things.
 

Vingegaard's answer to the last question (regarding the sporting aspect of his victory), verbatim:

"Ja, men øh, jeg tror i dag var - jeg vil nærmest sige jeg var tilbage på mit Tour de France-niveau, og øh hvis ikke bedre, øh ja. Jeg var flyvende til sidst, og selvfølgelig er jeg virkelig glad for min sejr i dag, men øh der er noget jeg er endnu mere glad for lige nu."

~"Well, I think today I was at my Tour de France level, if not even better. I was flying in the end, and of course I'm really happy about the victory, but there's something that makes me even happier right now." [He's happier that Van Hooydonck is well]

He's only getting stronger! Just imaging how frightening he will be when he rides all three GTs in the same season to build moar base.
A lot depends on what a typical May training camp looks like these days. It worked really well for Kuss this time cause he usually doesn't do a lot of high intensity before May anwyay, and the Giro itself had little high intensity for Kuss until the final mountain stages.

I think Vingegaard also had his lesser days during the Tour, like in the Vogues.
 
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