Through two flat sprint stages of the 2026 Tour de France, Visma-Lease a Bike have maintained their Giro d’Italia strategy of staying away from the front of the bunch to keep out of trouble.
The tactic was first employed during the Italian Grand Tour this year, where for nearly all of the flat stages, starting with the two bunch sprint days in Bulgaria, Visma-Lease a Bike kept away from the more crash-prone positions in the peloton.
This year’s Tour had, unusually, featured no bunch sprints before Wednesday’s stage 5, while Friday in Bordeaux brought the second sprint finish. Jonas Vingegaard told Eurosport before stage 5 to Pau that the Dutch WorldTour squad would continue with the same tactic.
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The aim of GC riders staying in the front in stages where they have little to gain and potentially everything to lose is to avoid splits. But as the double Tour de France winner pointed out, rather the team had looked back through all the flat stages of the last five years and only found one when splits occurred.
“It’s a flat stage, obviously, and we have had a new approach to the sprints this year,” Vingegaard told Eurosport. “And I think we will do the same today, so we will try to sit a bit more in the back, and stay safe there.”
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“We’ll stay with the whole team, I hope other GC teams will do the same. I think it will make racing a lot easier and a lot safer.”
One of the most safety-conscious riders in the peloton – Vingegaard is amongst those in the peloton wearing a face mask in this year’s race – the Dane pointed out that they had history on their side for their strategy.
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The tactic almost played against them on stage 5 after Vingegaard was held up in a crash with 5.5km to go, but he and his team got back to the peloton before the finish, avoiding any time losses. On stage 7, he rolled home in 59th place alongside teammate Edoardo Affini and close to yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar among the peloton of 100 riders.
This tactic has gone against the recent trend for Grand Tour riders to go as close to the front as possible, but on this occasion, Vingegaard said that in the last five years there had only been one occasion when late-kilometre splits occurred because of crashes that actually produced time losses.
“Of course there’s a lot of stress, but we also looked a bit into how cycling has been in the last five years. I think only one time there were actually gaps in a sprint in the Tour – stage 3 in 2021. It also depends if the roads are OK to do it, and we believe that today is ok to do it,” VIngegaard said.
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On the stage that Vingegaard referred to, as Cyclingnews put in its report for the day, “The closing kilometres of the stage were ruined by a succession of crashes, which saw Primož Roglič go down 9km out and lose over 1:21 at the finish.
“Another crash hit the middle of the peloton four kilometres out, with Tadej Pogačar held up as numerous riders hit the ground, while the sprint for the line saw Caleb Ewan touch wheels with Merlier, causing him and Peter Sagan to crash hard inside the final 150 metres.
“As a result of the crashes, only Richard Carapaz and Julian Alaphilippe managed to avoid losing time among the GC men, with groups of riders coming home at 14 seconds and 26 seconds – the latter group including Pogačar and Geraint Thomas.”
Vingegaard himself lost 1:21 that day, but so far in this year’s Tour, despite that scare on the road to Pau, things have gone to plan on both sprint stages.