{"id":4212,"date":"2025-07-18T22:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T22:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/4212\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T22:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T22:01:10","slug":"its-definitely-a-big-deficit-but-anything-can-happen-visma-lease-a-bike-promise-a-tour-de-france-fightback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/4212\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s definitely a big deficit but anything can happen’ – Visma-Lease a Bike promise a Tour de France fightback"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surprise! In developments everyone knew was coming because this is sport chatter and you can\u2019t ever be defeatist, duh, and despite it being absolutely ludicrous and flying in the face of reality \u2013 erm, hello, have you checked the GC recently, Jonas? \u2013 Visma-Lease a Bike have come out fighting and declared that the Tour de France <\/a>is not over. They can still beat Tadej Poga\u010dar.<\/a><\/p>\n

On the day that the defending champion Poga\u010dar took his second consecutive win in the Pyrenees and his fourth of the race with eight stages still to come, Jonas Vingegaard\u2019<\/a>s deficit to Poga\u010dar grew from 3:31 to 4:07<\/a>. A third Tour title for the Dane looks a distant possibility. At least this year, anyway.<\/p>\n

But he will not give up. He\u2019s still in the fight. \u201cThe Tour is far from over,\u201d he declared, resolutely. \u201cWe just have to keep trying, to keep believing that we can do something here in the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the first 10 days Visma-Lease a Bike were the most aggressive and attacking team, but on stage 12 to the Hautacam, the first mountain stage, they were found wanting and unable to isolate Poga\u010dar. Still, though, Vingegaard believes in his teammates. \u201cThe whole team is incredibly strong,\u201d he commented. \u201cWe just have to show it in the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sepp Kuss, so often Vingegaard\u2019s final mountain lieutenant, was just as upbeat. \u201cYou have to be positive, otherwise we wouldn\u2019t even start the Tour after the [Crit\u00e9rium du] Dauphin\u00e9. You have to believe, everybody in the race believes they have their chances, so it\u2019s all relative.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a good time together at the dinner table, the vibe is good, and we know from experience that there are still a lot of stages and key moments coming.\u201d The vibes are good, but they came here to win, not to have good dinner table chat.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a big deficit,\u201d Kuss acknowledged. \u201cIf you look at that on paper you could say it\u2019s over, but it\u2019s bike racing, anything can happen. We saw Poga\u010dar, he crashed on stage 11, you can be behind a split, can have a bad moment, anything can happen, and we still have the hardest stages ahead of us. You just have to focus on what you can control and take advantage when the situation is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matteo Jorgenson, Visma\u2019s second man in the GC fight until he exploded and blew up on the Hautacam, was similarly positive. \u201cJonas was super strong. I’m proud of his fight,\u201d the American said. \u201cWe\u2019re doing our best in the race, and I really am proud of how we have raced so far, and I don’t think we should be disappointed at all. There’s not nothing you can do if you give your best and you’re fighting every day<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe wanted to get through today and see how they were head to head in just a 20 minute effort. We\u2019ll assess how we\u2019re doing going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet all these comments are to the backdrop of the reality on the ground: Poga\u010dar is far ahead, and undoubtedly better. Visma and Vingegaard can\u2019t pretend otherwise. It\u2019s a sign of Poga\u010dar\u2019s dominance and superiority that Vingegaard is saying that his condition is better than ever. He sped up the climb to Peyragudes at an average speed of 27.7kph, but Poga\u010dar was better, faster, stronger. \u201cI think I did probably my best ever performance. And to be honest, and Tadej was stronger and deserved to win so congrats to him,\u201d Vingegaard said<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday was a terrible day for us. Until the final climb, I actually felt quite good, but then all of a sudden the lights just went out, and to be able to come back like this today is very nice for us. We’re super excited.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surprise! In developments everyone knew was coming because this is sport chatter and you can\u2019t ever be defeatist,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-4212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}