{"id":772013,"date":"2026-07-01T12:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T12:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/772013\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T12:06:09","slug":"vingegaards-team-gets-a-much-needed-tour-de-fance-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/772013\/","title":{"rendered":"Vingegaard’s team gets a much needed Tour de Fance boost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edoardo Affini<\/a> will be able to start the Tour de France as scheduled on July 4, Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> confirmed<\/a> on Tuesday morning. The Dutch team had been waiting for just under a week to see how Affini was doing physically after he crashed hard<\/a> during the Italian time trial championship.Visma | Lease a Bike was left in shock when Affini went down just 6 kilometers into the Italian time trial on Thursday June 25. The veteran rider slammed into the guardrail<\/a> and had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance.<\/p>\n

No fractures were found, but a cut in his groin did require stitches. There were no other serious injuries, but since the crash occurred just a week and a half before the start of the Tour de France, the big question was whether Affini would recover in time.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old Italian had already sent a positive signal by hopping on his bike on Monday and uploading a training ride<\/a> to Strava. The morning after that ride, Visma | Lease a Bike officially confirmed that Affini is cleared to travel to the Tour and is ready for the July 4 start in Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

Affini to play a key role at Tour de France team time trialIt\u2019s not surprising that Visma | Lease a Bike waited patiently for a decision regarding Affini. The Italian is a crucial player on the team for the Tour de France<\/a>. \u201cEdoardo is a big guy with a lot of power. He can practically carry a team leader in his back pocket,\u201d said team manager Marc Reef.Affini will be crucial for the team time trial on Day 1. Visma | Lease a Bike will be hoping that team leader Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> can already make up some time in this discipline, and after the withdrawals of Wout van Aert<\/a> and Christophe Laporte<\/a>, the question mark next to Affini\u2019s name was perhaps one too many.Van Aert will be replaced by Davide Piganzoli<\/a>, while the young Per Strand Hagenes will take over from Laporte. This gives Visma | Lease a Bike a strong lineup on paper, featuring Vingegaard, Piganzoli, Hagenes, Affini, as well as Victor Campenaerts, Matteo Jorgenson, Sepp Kuss, and Bruno Armirail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edoardo Affini will be able to start the Tour de France as scheduled on July 4, Visma |…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,175718,6495,85,346968,23372],"class_list":["post-772013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-edoardo-affini","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france-2026","tag-visma-lease-a-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772013","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=772013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}