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Teams & Riders Jonas Vingegaard thread: Love in Iberia

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If he seriously injured than fine.

But staying away for races for 3 months in the middle of season is so bad for the sport. It’s a serious problem for cycling that some riders and teams prefer altitude over races all the times.
That's what happens if you put all the eggs in one basket (TdF) and tell your sponsors it's the only thing that matters. You start to "protect" your riders so they actually get there. Jonas started to crash a lot, so they will limit his chances of crashing by not letting him race. That's one thing i hoped they would do with Roglič before TdF. But he managed to crash during TdF also, so it wasn't important.
 
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I feel the urge to intervene in the debate regarding Jonas' latest injury and various estimates on recovery time.

I am even more reserved about commenting on Jonas' condition after the P-N crash than post last year's Itzulia's many severe physical consequences for Jonas.

As an analogy, I would like to share a personal story.
In January 2023, my wife had a concussion that knocked her out a bit, but still continued the next day in her running club and the following day entered a long-awaited party with her old school friends. Similar to Jonas continuing his ride to the finish line during the fateful stage of this year's P-N.
3 am in the night, 69 hours after her indident, she woke up and wanted to be transported to the hospital, and she was not used to being like that. 20 difficult months passed, where she had to withdraw from everything, reduce her working hours, leave everything at home before she could do anything again, but then 1 month later she had a small concussion again here in November '24, and now it is not just back to zero, but worse than post effects of her first concussion. so I've had to take her out of the equation with pretty much everything on the family front and just stand under the waterfall and hope that the day comes when she's fully recovered.

When it comes to the skull and the gray matter that hides behind it, pro riders are not superhumans here.
The long time side effects of a concussion can be far more complex than a lung puncture/collapse.

Regarding Pogi's crash in Strade, I actually didn't think so much of a direct concussion as I thought maybe a misalignment of the neck.
If I have to come up with yet a personal anecdote, I had a crash on my bike over a decade ago, a person stepped out onto the bike lane without orienting himself. I fell heavily head first, halfway into the person, halfway down into the asphalt, but my helmet took most of it. Coincidently it happened to be a young medical student who wanted to check me and see if I was OK. I was irritated and had to rush to an important morning meeting. But when the meeting started, I felt nauseous and the world spun around for me.

I went to the doctor, who couldn't find anything related to a concussion. I did get a general health check-up, as I was set for participating in the La Marmotte bike race 3 weeks later (no DNS, was accomplished successfully :)).
But 2½ years of sudden migraine attacks had to pass before I found the right chiropractor. She could immediately say that my head was "loosely sitting on top of my body". And just the first real crack in my neck by her and it felt like 10 elephants were being removed from my shoulders, besides like a tunnel vision that instantly disappeared; suddenly felt like I could see the world around me with much broader FOV. This after having consultet another chiropractor of whom had also twisted my head around. But it was not only the upper cervical vertebrae but also one of the upper spinal vertebrae.

This is just to nuance the debate a bit regarding injuries and when it comes to the substance between the ears, it can get really hairy.

Of course, I hope that it is not career-changing in the same ways that it has been for other riders.
 
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Calm down, Visma is still the second best team in the world and it is normal to expect their top riders to get good results. High performance is full of sacrifices, tears and blood. Vingegaard is their biggest star, it is normal to expect big things from him and he knows this.
Do you know how many riders won the Tour 2 times in a row since 1990 (specialization era)?
Indurain
Froome
Pogacar
3 GT legends of this sport. How can Visma not put pressure in his biggest star and one of the best GT riders ever? For me he may not have the palmares but he definitely has the qualities of a legendary GT rider.
Armstrong and Contador did too.
 
Is the reference to Iberia related to him planning on racing the Vuelta???

The plan was he would be trying to win races in Portugal and Spain that he hadn't won before, but now Algarve could end up becoming the only one of those he actually does this year.

And I'm of course the sort of guy that will always seize an opportunity to make a dumb reference to something else. It could have been Fisherman's Friend, which was also one of the options in the now deleted poll, but as a Dane, with too much knowledge about less than great music, I went with this one instead:

View: https://youtu.be/e3bBf6jAu8o?si=Br2TY0b6Sb-crSgy
 
Crashes ended many careers. Maybe not at once, but many were never the same after them. I think Jonas is one of those riders. He started making mistakes, he's anxious, he can't get to the level he was and even if he would, it would be lower then Pogačars. Visma wants him winning Tour and they put huge pressure on him for the race. Nothing else matters.

I think Visma is becoming a really bad environment for any rider. They will run them into the ground to get some result.
Thats a lot of assumptions. The facts so far are that he was at an astounding level last year at the Tour still with that short prep; there is no physical long term/permanent effects from the crash; and even psychological - as pointed out by others he did not really struggle in technical descents either at the Tour…
 
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When it comes to the skull and the gray matter that hides behind it, pro riders are not superhumans here.
The long time side effects of a concussion can be far more complex than a lung puncture/collapse.
Thanks for that, and a very good point.
Vingegaards crash and the debate that followed immediately reminded me of Intermarché's Taco van den Hoorn. He suffereed a concussion after a fall and was out for 16(!) months with severe headaches and concentration problems.
When I hear his teammates say Vingo looked completely out of it on the bike, I can still get mad. Why the hell didn't they withdraw him immediately? Concussions can be a very very serious and unpredictable injury. You don't mess around with those imo.