Jonas Vingegaard has said his mental state is just where it needs to be ahead of the Tour de France as he looks to wrest back the yellow jersey from four-time winner Tadej Pogačar and add to his 2022 and 2023 titles.
Having already won the Giro d’Italia this season, Vingegaard changed the build-up to the Tour, which he’s done for the past five editions – two of which he won and the other three he came second – and he’s much happier for it.
Sitting down to speak to international media on Thursday evening, Vingegaard was calm as ever, smiling from ear to ear, including when he saw close rival Pogačar outside of the Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau for a great photo of two modern GC greats.
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“[I feel] better, stronger. I would even say happier in my mental state,” said Vingegaard, to a full room of international journalists. “Also, I’ve had a very good year so far this year, and I’ve enjoyed riding a bit more this year than I did last year.
“We tried something new, which was also the plan, because I think we realised after last year that it wasn’t really so enjoyable to do what we did every year, so now we tried to change to mix it up with the preparation for the Tour, which has been going really well this year. So in a mental state, I’m at a very good place.”
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Vingegaard, like Pogačar in 2024, is going for the Giro-Tour double, which was a change in the Slovenian’s calendar, which returned him to the top step of a Grand Tour for the first time since 2021.
And in a similar way to his contemporary, while he dominated the mountain stages and won five of the stages, he at no point had to over-exert more energy than was required, able even to allow teammate Sepp Kuss to go up the road during the third week of the race as he had the maglia rosa sewn up.
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“I mean, of course, without taking anything away from anyone from the Giro, that’s true that I didn’t have to completely kill myself, and I didn’t come out of the Giro completely on my knees,” said Vingegaard.
“That makes also means that you can recover faster upwards and start your training and get into a good rhythm quicker, because if you’re on your knees after the Giro, you need two weeks, maybe even more, to recover, then it’s hard to start building towards the Tour, because then the Tour is already coming. So for me at least, I came out of the Giro in a good way, and pretty quickly I could start building towards the Tour.”
Jonas Vingegaard rides to the Team Presentation stage with his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates after the press conference Thursday (Image credit: Getty Images)
Vingegaard clarified further on how much happier he was to have already had the Giro in his legs heading to the Tour, and with this change-up, he seems to be arriving in brutally strong form.
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It’s also his first start at the Tour since he won it in 2023 and well defeated Pogačar in the final week that he hasn’t had a major crash in the spring which has disrupted his preparation.
In 2024, his life-threatening crash at Itzulia almost saw him miss the race, and a year ago he missed a long stint of racing after crashing out of Paris-Nice with a concussion.
“It was more the whole schedule going to the Tour that I said that, like, I didn’t really fancy doing what I did for the last five years,” he said.
“This year it didn’t motivate me so much to just do the same thing over and over again, and I personally needed a change. We then decided to mix it up completely and do the Giro.”
It’s victory and victory only that he’s after across the next three weeks.
“The Tour de France is still the biggest race, it’s still the race you really want to win, not saying that I’m not happy with with what I’ve won already this year, because I am extremely happy, especially winning the Giro d’Italia and now I’ve won all three GTs, but again, the Tour de France is just the biggest race of the year, and I’m here also to go for the victory.”
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