Jonas Vingegaard: Something is Rotten

[Revelation]

And still 4,5 minutes behind your favourite cyclist. You may want to consider the implications. Or not...

The implication that Pogacar is also doping? Of course he is.

 

[Red Rick]

There's no denying the conversation about Vingegaard would be very different without Pogacar. The same would be said for Pogacar without Vingegaard and without Van der Poel. Yet Pogacar eclipses both on their terrain with the exception of like 2 races.

Vingegaard and Pogacar have had the "luck" if you will, that their TdFs have swung back and forth a few times. This year is essentially the first year that it all has seemed entirely inevitable for a majority of fans, and the moment we got hit with that little piece of reality wasn't even in the Tour itself, it was in the Dauphine.

Even last year, Pogacar's dominance had a tiny semblance of novelty. Now it's completely gone.

 

[Revelation]

Let's be honest here, the original point of these threads may be to discuss whether a rider is doping or not, but that's not really, what the actual agenda of the posters are. It is to be driven by your biases to create a reality, where everything that happens enforces your narrative; how logical or not it is being irrelevant. It's actually tied to what I consider to be one of the biggest issues in the world/human race, where this is done with actual facts, resulting in wilful ignorance of reality. Considering there are no facts here, everything in the sport isn't standardized and everything the cyclists' do not identical, it's not as bad and damaging, but still not a situation for constructive discussion.

That's why in the Pogacar thread, after every performance, his every action is transformed to be proof of doping or motor, or him being a terrible, vindictive, greedy person, no matter how absurd the train of thought is. Just recently him sprinting to beat Vingo was a terrible look and the Ventoux sprint was a apparently enough for someone to give up the sport.

To bring it somewhat back to Vingo, I don't see how the fact that Pogacar will overshadow him should mean we should forget about him. I've already said what I think about the natural ability of the two (and how 2019-20 Fattycar doing what he did makes 24-> Pogacar not surprising, except maybe a bit better consistency than I imagined), and if Vingo actually is Froome v2, that's still very sad for the sport, just like v1 was.

 

[AttaqueDeRolland]

The most doped a rider has been for a race during the season: this guy for the last 5 TdFs. Achieved nothing but some talk around his neigbourhod by his 24th birthday, to become what he did in laughably short amount of time. Infuriating that he and his lack of innate ability is just skating on by bc of Pogacar.

Three possibilities here:

• You're new to cycling.
• You just don't actually follow cycling very closely.
• You're being purposely disingenuous.

Already at 20, he showed that he was an oustanding climbing talent, beating Egan Bernal on a mountain time-trial in Sibiu Tour. Bernal was already then considered one of the very biggest talents in the world, and a handful of weeks later he would finish fourth in Tour de l'Avenir, which he would win a year later.

At 21, he was having a great season until he got injured in Tour des Fjords, matching Kasper Asgreen in GP Viborg, beating out the likes of Alexander Kamp and Mikkel Bjerg. I hopefully shouldn't have to tell you, that the parcours in GP Viborg isn't exactly a great match for a super light and skinny climbing specialist like Vingegaard.

At 22, he grabbed the record on Coll de Rates and was later signed by Jumbo-Visma, and already in his neopro season in 2019, at 23, he won a stage in Tour de Pologne ahead of the likes of Pavel Sivakov, Jai Hindley, Sergio Higuita, Rafał Majka, Davide Formolo, and Diego Ulissi.

It's just an outright lie to say that he had achieved nothing by his 24th birthday. Simply a lie. Late bloomers have always existed in any sport, and Vingegaard wasn't even that late of a bloomer, it's just that the Sagans and Pogis and Remcos and Del Toros have completely twisted our view of when cyclists should break through. You can go and have a look at Florian Lipowitz for a great and very similar example; he really only had his breakthrough in the second half of last season, at the age of 23-24.

And just to clarify: I'm not here to say that Vingegaard isn't doped. I'm simply to here dispel this ridiculous idea that Vingegaard had some kind of Chris Froomesque surge, appearing from nothing to be a contender. That's simply not the case. Go watch Tour de Pologne in 2019, Alto de l'Anglirú in 2020, Jebel Jais in 2021 if you're still in doubt.

 

[Revelation]

Three possibilities here:

• You're new to cycling.
• You just don't actually follow cycling very closely.
• You're being purposely disingenuous.

Already at 20, he showed that he was an oustanding climbing talent, beating Egan Bernal on a mountain time-trial in Sibiu Tour. Bernal was already then considered one of the very biggest talents in the world, and a handful of weeks later he would finish fourth in Tour de l'Avenir, which he would win a year later.

At 21, he was having a great season until he got injured in Tour des Fjords, matching Kasper Asgreen in GP Viborg, beating out the likes of Alexander Kamp and Mikkel Bjerg. I hopefully shouldn't have to tell you, that the parcours in GP Viborg isn't exactly a great match for a super light and skinny climbing specialist like Vingegaard.

At 22, he grabbed the record on Coll de Rates and was later signed by Jumbo-Visma, and already in his neopro season in 2019, at 23, he won a stage in Tour de Pologne ahead of the likes of Pavel Sivakov, Jai Hindley, Sergio Higuita, Rafał Majka, Davide Formolo, and Diego Ulissi.

It's just an outright lie to say that he had achieved nothing by his 24th birthday. Simply a lie. Late bloomers have always existed in any sport, and Vingegaard wasn't even that late of a bloomer, it's just that the Sagans and Pogis and Remcos and Del Toros have completely twisted our view of when cyclists should break through. You can go and have a look at Florian Lipowitz for a great and very similar example; he really only had his breakthrough in the second half of last season, at the age of 23-24.

And just to clarify: I'm not here to say that Vingegaard isn't doped. I'm simply to here dispel this ridiculous idea that Vingegaard had some kind of Chris Froomesque surge, appearing from nothing to be a contender. That's simply not the case. Go watch Tour de Pologne in 2019, Alto de l'Anglirú in 2020, Jebel Jais in 2021 if you're still in doubt.

Thank you for reinforcing my point, suddenly this is just natural progression and you can make huge jumps at 24, but reading the Pogacar thread, it seems to be the consensus that you can't make big jumps at age 20 and lower.

Also, what does "not here to say he isn't doped", do you think he's doped or not?

 

[AttaqueDeRolland]

Thank you for reinforcing my point, suddenly this is just natural progression and you can make huge jumps at 24 ...

Again, you're very clearly trying to frame Vingegaard's emergence as something Froomesque, and that's just not at all in line with reality. I'll say it again: Either you're new to this sport, you don't follow it very closely, or you're being purposely disingenuous. There were 34 neopros on the WorldTour in 2019. Only four of them managed to win a WorldTour-level race in their neopro season. Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard, and Cees Bol. Vingegaard has been a massive climbing talent since his late teens. There's absolutely no comparison to Froome's emergence. Any similarity between the two and their emergence exists only in your imagination.

 

[Brullnux]

Neither Vingegaard nor Pogacar are suspicious because of a lack of talent in the Froome way, and there isn't really much more to say about that. They're suspicious because of the fact their performances match those of the 90s and because they are so much better than everyone else, and seemingly flawless.

 

[Bald_Fraud]

Let's be honest here, the original point of these threads may be to discuss whether a rider is doping or not, but that's not really, what the actual agenda of the posters are. It is to be driven by your biases to create a reality, where everything that happens enforces your narrative; how logical or not it is being irrelevant. It's actually tied to what I consider to be one of the biggest issues in the world/human race, where this is done with actual facts, resulting in wilful ignorance of reality. Considering there are no facts here, everything in the sport isn't standardized and everything the cyclists' do not identical, it's not as bad and damaging, but still not a situation for constructive discussion.

That's why in the Pogacar thread, after every performance, his every action is transformed to be proof of doping or motor, or him being a terrible, vindictive, greedy person, no matter how absurd the train of thought is. Just recently him sprinting to beat Vingo was a terrible look and the Ventoux sprint was a apparently enough for someone to give up the sport.

To bring it somewhat back to Vingo, I don't see how the fact that Pogacar will overshadow him should mean we should forget about him. I've already said what I think about the natural ability of the two (and how 2019-20 Fattycar doing what he did makes 24-> Pogacar not surprising, except maybe a bit better consistency than I imagined), and if Vingo actually is Froome v2, that's still very sad for the sport, just like v1 was.

Agree 100%, that it's obviously a matter of opinion as to what is "very sad for the sport". For example, I find it sad for the sport that the best climber is an incredibly powerful, explosive rider who works with Gianetti and is also a dominant force in cobbled classics. But I completely understand why Pogi fans would rather focus more on the dude getting spanked by 4mins+ in his favoured terrain.

 

[Raest]

The argument of the OP if I got it right is that it's OK for Vingegaard to have big jumps in performance at 24 but it's not OK for Pogacar, referring to the claim, I think, made in the Gianneti thread that he made a 10% jump in performance in the last couple of years. Which would have been valid if it wasn't for the fact that he was older and also at a relatively stable level for 2-3 years prior to that. In other words, it's not the fact that he improved at 25-26 but that he was at a certain level between 22ish-25 (very high level at that) then he made a huge jump. Whereas Vingegaard had been improving pretty much from the time he entered the pro-Tour. I think that there is more nuance to Pogacar's change of form to be fair, as UAE were (and still are) horribly tactically which hamstrung his performance somewhat plus he had the wrist injury in 23 that sidelined him for 6 weeks.

 

[FrontHeadlock]

That's why in the Pogacar thread, after every performance, his every action is transformed to be proof of doping or motor, or him being a terrible, vindictive, greedy person, no matter how absurd the train of thought is. Just recently him sprinting to beat Vingo was a terrible look and the Ventoux sprint was a apparently enough for someone to give up the sport.

Well, I mean he's winning everything, never seems to get tired, and is sprinting at the end of stages to gain seconds when he's winning by over 4 minutes. It's not entertaining, especially because most people intuitively know it's not on the up and up.

If he were winning here and there at a more normal clip, and wasn't massively insecure every time he raced, people would be less annoyed. This is why Pogacar gets more attention in the Clinic than every other rider, JV included.

 

[Cookster15]

never seems to get tired

Never? Not sure about this? He’s looked tired after some MTF finishes I’ve noticed - this goes back to when he won his first Tour in 2020.

 

[Lorzenz08]

There's no denying the conversation about Vingegaard would be very different without Pogacar. The same would be said for Pogacar without Vingegaard and without Van der Poel. Yet Pogacar eclipses both on their terrain with the exception of like 2 races.

Vingegaard and Pogacar have had the "luck" if you will, that their TdFs have swung back and forth a few times. This year is essentially the first year that it all has seemed entirely inevitable for a majority of fans, and the moment we got hit with that little piece of reality wasn't even in the Tour itself, it was in the Dauphine.

Even last year, Pogacar's dominance had a tiny semblance of novelty. Now it's completely gone.

I mean only 16 months ago most pundits thought Pogi would never win a TdF in his life again.

And since Vingegaard is starting a TdF as a leader at Visma they are 2 - 2.

Not gonna lie it is not looking good for Vingo, but so far the only reason you could be tired of Pogi winning this year TdF is if you dont like him.

 

[ElDesordenado]

Three possibilities here:

• You're new to cycling.
• You just don't actually follow cycling very closely.
• You're being purposely disingenuous.

Already at 20, he showed that he was an oustanding climbing talent, beating Egan Bernal on a mountain time-trial in Sibiu Tour. Bernal was already then considered one of the very biggest talents in the world, and a handful of weeks later he would finish fourth in Tour de l'Avenir, which he would win a year later.

At 21, he was having a great season until he got injured in Tour des Fjords, matching Kasper Asgreen in GP Viborg, beating out the likes of Alexander Kamp and Mikkel Bjerg. I hopefully shouldn't have to tell you, that the parcours in GP Viborg isn't exactly a great match for a super light and skinny climbing specialist like Vingegaard.

At 22, he grabbed the record on Coll de Rates and was later signed by Jumbo-Visma, and already in his neopro season in 2019, at 23, he won a stage in Tour de Pologne ahead of the likes of Pavel Sivakov, Jai Hindley, Sergio Higuita, Rafał Majka, Davide Formolo, and Diego Ulissi.

It's just an outright lie to say that he had achieved nothing by his 24th birthday. Simply a lie. Late bloomers have always existed in any sport, and Vingegaard wasn't even that late of a bloomer, it's just that the Sagans and Pogis and Remcos and Del Toros have completely twisted our view of when cyclists should break through. You can go and have a look at Florian Lipowitz for a great and very similar example; he really only had his breakthrough in the second half of last season, at the age of 23-24.

And just to clarify: I'm not here to say that Vingegaard isn't doped. I'm simply to here dispel this ridiculous idea that Vingegaard had some kind of Chris Froomesque surge, appearing from nothing to be a contender. That's simply not the case. Go watch Tour de Pologne in 2019, Alto de l'Anglirú in 2020, Jebel Jais in 2021 if you're still in doubt.

So nothing suspicious about Vingegaard's leap of performance in 2021? The Danish national team coach at the time considered him a good climber with decent time trialing skills. He was expected to improve on the great job he had done at the Vuelta in 2020 with another stint as a Vuelta domestique.

Then, from the summer 2021 and onwards, he consistently rides top 3 time trials in the Tour de France and is able, at times, to drop Pogacar in the mountains. And gone is any sort of inconsistency, which previously used to be characteristic of his performances.

He became so good that last year, he was able to finish second in the TdF with a month and a half of training after a life threatening crash. And after yesterday's TdF stage, Arensmann called Vingegaard and Pogacar 'aliens' in terms of their superior level. I'm not saying Vingegaard is without talent, but in terms of the leap he's taken, I think there's every reason for skepticism.

 

[FrontHeadlock]

I mean only 16 months ago most pundits thought Pogi would never win a TdF in his life again.

And since Vingegaard is starting a TdF as a leader at Visma they are 2 - 2.

Not gonna lie it is not looking good for Vingo, but so far the only reason you could be tired of Pogi winning this year TdF is if you dont like him.

Uh, it’s entertainment. Of course he’d be tired of watching the TdF with Pog “winning” easily. How many TV shows do you consistently watch where you can’t stand both the main character and the plot?

 

[Revelation]

Again, you're very clearly trying to frame Vingegaard's emergence as something Froomesque, and that's just not at all in line with reality. I'll say it again: Either you're new to this sport, you don't follow it very closely, or you're being purposely disingenuous. There were 34 neopros on the WorldTour in 2019. Only four of them managed to win a WorldTour-level race in their neopro season. Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard, and Cees Bol. Vingegaard has been a massive climbing talent since his late teens. There's absolutely no comparison to Froome's emergence. Any similarity between the two and their emergence exists only in your imagination.

These posts, combined with your posts in the Pogacar thread, combined with your lack of conviction to your point to the point you find it necessary to attack my credibility instead, makes it clear you suffer severely from the bias-driven reality/narrative-creation I described earlier. This of course trying to discuss these riders with you completely pointless.

 

[Revelation]

The argument of the OP if I got it right is that it's OK for Vingegaard to have big jumps in performance at 24 but it's not OK for Pogacar, referring to the claim, I think, made in the Gianneti thread that he made a 10% jump in performance in the last couple of years. Which would have been valid if it wasn't for the fact that he was older and also at a relatively stable level for 2-3 years prior to that. In other words, it's not the fact that he improved at 25-26 but that he was at a certain level between 22ish-25 (very high level at that) then he made a huge jump. Whereas Vingegaard had been improving pretty much from the time he entered the pro-Tour. I think that there is more nuance to Pogacar's change of form to be fair, as UAE were (and still are) horribly tactically which hamstrung his performance somewhat plus he had the wrist injury in 23 that sidelined him for 6 weeks.

No, that wasn't my point at all. 2020 Pogacar at the TdF was at an incredibly high, all-time great level already. He was still 21, with a terrible physique and looked quite bad on the bike. Clearly a lot of things were far from optimized both with him and the team, and a lot of % to gain. What we know of the prime age of a pro-cyclist, the jump from that Pogacar to a 25-26 old him with severely improved physique and technique is not surprising, except for the slightly more impressive consistency of performance that I expected.

It is truly insane to describe Vingo's improvement as natural in any sense, he literally improved miles more from age 23-25 than Pogacar did from 21 to 25.

 

[Gratemans]

I think both of them are doped, and anybody trying to argue one of them is clean and the other one isn't, is just blinded by fanboyism imo.

 

[E_F_]

I think both of them are doped, and anybody trying to argue one of them is clean and the other one isn't, is just blinded by fanboyism imo.

Obviously they're both incredibly dirty.

 

[Ripper]

I really, really tire of hearing about the 'initial progression to being one of the world's best' argument. Not the degree to which they are best (power numbers, climbing times, etc.), but more how they 'arrived'. Pogacar arrived quite early after being a very strong junior - that is not, in itself weird (people do develop at different rates and UAE got in early ... that could be indicative of something, or nothing!). Jonas started later and thus his progression has been later - that is also, in itself, not weird. Neither have Froome silliness going on, where they were pro pack fodder for years before they had a monthfermation transformation.

Now, the actual numbers and speeds we are seeing, that is something else! They are both miles ahead of others, so it makes sense they get the attention.

And Pogcar's 23-24 jump by learning how to suddenly train better? That is up there will Pharmstrong being transformed into a climber by cancer. Whatever it takes to suspend disbelief!!

 

[Cookster15]

And Pogcar's 23-24 jump by learning how to suddenly train better?

But you’ve ignored the very good point by @Revelation. Vingegaard’s jump between 2020 and 2021 was far bigger than Pogacar 2023 to 2024. Go back and check betting odds before the 2021 TdF. Nobody mentioned Jonas. Next thing he’s dropping Pogacar on Ventoux. Somewhat convenient that Visma found such a generational talent immediately after Roglic crashed out?

Whataboutism is unavoidable with these two but this is the Vingo Clinic thread. Note I think they are both obvious dopers (how could they possibly not be with their all time best numbers?) but Vingegaard’s 2021 arrival to me was more shocking than Froome.

Also remember after the Combloux TT suddenly we read claims Jonas has the highest VO2 max ever recorded. Why didn’t we read about that earlier? So his fan club had to justify what we all just witnessed that day. What is more likely is Visma stumbled upon a super responder in 2021.

 

[Cookster15]

Vingegaard has been a massive climbing talent since his late teens

Apparently so. But few outside of Visma knew who Jonas Vingegaard was until July 2021.

32nd in 2019 Itzulia
72nd in 2019 Romandie
48th in the 2020 Vuelta
8th in the 2020 Tour of Poland

Then 2021 .... bam !

Invoking Froome is a deflection IMO.

 

[Red Rick]

12th in the queen stage of Itzulia in the group with Mas, Landa, Gaudu. Then he wins a stage and leads Poland.

That's literally more than Evenepoel did climbing wise in stage races in 2019.

 

[Cookster15]

12th in the queen stage of Itzulia in the group with Mas, Landa, Gaudu. Then he wins a stage and leads Poland.

That's literally more than Evenepoel did climbing wise in stage races in 2019.

In 2019 Evenepoel was 19 years old. Like I mentioned in the lead-up to the 2021 Tour, 24 year old Vingegaard's name wasn't in the conversation of possible contenders.

Jonas's dropping of the newfound generational talent on Ventoux was at least as shocking IMO. Everyone was shocked at the very young Pogacar's arrival in 2019/2020. At that time Roglic was the top dog at Visma and there was that scene of disbelieve on the faces of Dumoulin & co at the finish of LPdBF.

But then for the following year Rogla crashes before the Tour and miraculously Visma find another generational talent just in time? Not buying that. Invoking Froome (and Remco) in this conversation is a deflection IMO.

 

[Mayomaniac]

In 2019 Evenepoel was 19 years old. Like I mentioned in the lead-up to the 2021 Tour, 24 year old Vingegaard's name wasn't in the conversation of possible contenders.

Jonas's dropping of the newfound generational talent on Ventoux was at least as shocking IMO. Everyone was shocked at the very young Pogacar's arrival in 2019/2020. At that time Roglic was the top dog at Visma and there was that scene of disbelieve on the faces of Dumoulin & co at the finish of LPdBF.

But then for the following year Rogla crashes before the Tour and miraculously Visma find another generational talent just in time? Not buying that. Invoking Froome (and Remco) in this conversation is a deflection IMO.

I do remember Horner of all people mentioning him as a furture GT rider/winner after his strong showing on the Angliru in 2020.

 

[Valv.Piti]

To be fair, Horner has probably also called Andrew Talansky, Tejay van Garderen, Matteo Jorgenson and the likes future GT winner, hasnt he? Sounds like something my man Christopher Horner would do.