{"id":806959,"date":"2026-07-17T22:17:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/806959\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:17:11","slug":"sick-and-bruised-visma-have-a-point-to-prove-on-stage-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/806959\/","title":{"rendered":"Sick and bruised, Visma have a point to prove on Stage 14"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, the general classification contenders are likely to take center stage again in the Tour de France. Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> has already stated that it has \u201ca plan\u201d<\/a> for the second half of the Tour de France. And we might see as early as Stage 14. In any case, on Friday after Stage 13<\/a>, Marc Reef<\/a> took explained his team\u2019s situation to IDL Pro Cycling, among others.First, let\u2019s look at Friday\u2019s stage itself<\/a>. A large group broke away, finally getting the peloton\u2019s blessing. \u201cIt was pretty controlled,\u201d Reef analysed afterward. \u201cPidcock was in the breakaway, and there were quite a few teams that were afraid of losing a spot in the general classification. Because of that, it was pretty controlled.\u201dThat certainly wasn\u2019t a bad thing, considering what\u2019s still to come. In fact, two tough mountain stages are coming up on Saturday and Sunday. How is Visma | Lease a Bike shaping up on the eve of the race? \u201cPretty good. Bruno (Armirail, ed.) is doing better and better. Matteo Jorgenson<\/a> was also doing a bit better today. That was a good sign, too, but we\u2019ll have to see how things go in the upcoming stages.\u201dBecause Reef, of course, also knows that Armirail\u2019s crash was a major setback. Jorgenson, for his part, was feeling a bit under the weather, so he was kept separate from the group as a precaution<\/a>. These are, of course, major names, which means that Visma | Lease a Bike isn\u2019t at full strength across the board.<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"matteo-jorgenson\"\/<\/p>\n

Jorgenson crashed on Tuesday during Stage 10<\/p>\n

Reef is optimistic about Visma | Lease’s chancesAccording to Reef, Sepp Kuss<\/a> is \u201cdoing just fine.\u201d \u201cHe felt good on the Tourmalet; at that point, he was the only support rider left in the group, with everyone else being team leaders. Other than that, he finished the stage well today.\u201d That was, of course, good news for Visma | Lease a Bike, which\u2014following the setbacks for Armirail and Jorgenson\u2014is not at full strength as a team.<\/p>\n

Will that affect the Dutch team\u2019s game plan? \u201cWe\u2019ll have to see if it\u2019s possible. As I said before, it\u2019s important that everyone is at full strength before we can take advantage of that. We\u2019re making progress step by step, but we\u2019re not there yet. We\u2019re still growing. The guys are on their way back, but that takes time.’<\/p>\n

So we\u2019ll just have to wait and see how Visma | Lease a Bike performs on Saturday. \u201cIt\u2019s an important day, just as the next day will be very important. Sunday features a somewhat longer climb\u2014about half an hour\u2014and it\u2019s also quite steep, with a true uphill finish. Tomorrow\u2019s stage is very irregular. From the summit, there are still six kilometers to the finish line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday, the general classification contenders are likely to take center stage again in the Tour de France.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,238460,784,345120,63661,63663,85,346968,23372],"class_list":["post-806959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bruno-armirail","tag-cycling","tag-marc-reef","tag-matteo-jorgenson","tag-sepp-kuss","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\/806959","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=806959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}