{"id":956428,"date":"2026-11-03T06:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T06:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/956428\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T06:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T06:44:13","slug":"tadej-pogacars-uae-teammate-feared-jonas-vingegaard-for-tour-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/956428\/","title":{"rendered":"Tadej Pogacar’s UAE teammate feared Jonas Vingegaard for Tour de France"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nAccording to Mikkel Bjerg<\/a>, who rode the Giro for UAE, he feared that the Dane was in his best shape in many years as he believed that the two would be set for a tightly-contested jostle for yellow in July.”I had a feeling that this was the best Jonas we’ve ever seen,” Bjerg said on Eurosport’s Radio Tour.<\/a>\"Jonas<\/p>\n

Jonas Vingegaard<\/p>\n

“I thought it would be the closest Tour in many years”<\/p>\n

“Going into the Tour, I thought it would be the closest Tour in many years. It didn’t quite turn out that way, but I definitely felt he had stepped up a level.”<\/p>\n

Of course, a three-week battle between the two didn’t come to fruition as Pogacar took the yellow jersey for keeps on stage six, going solo on Col du Tourmalet before putting over 2:30 into Vingegaard and even more into the rest of the overall contenders.<\/p>\n

Vingegaard kept things tighter in subsequent stages, but never dropped Pogacar before his team appeared to be teeing up an attack on stage 15 before the Dane’s unfortunate crash before the day’s mountain-top finish.<\/p>\n

At the time, Vingegaard was 4:30 behind Pogacar, but had publicly expressed his desire to keep fighting for yellow – with the stage’s finish at Plateau de Solaison understood to be a major goal for attempting to put Pogacar under pressure.<\/p>\n

That fall saw him abandon the race with a broken collarbone. He underwent surgery before it was confirmed that the two-time winner’s season was over.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to 2027, former Danish national coach and current Eurosport expert, Anders Lund, wants Vingegaard to keep the Tour de France as his main objective, but surround it with a far more ambitious one-day programme featuring Strade Bianche, the Ardennes Classics, the World Championships and Il Lombardia.<\/p>\n

Vingegaard urged to do one-day races\u201cHe needs to start racing one-day races,\u201d Lund said on Eurosport.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe needs a season where he really commits to it properly, instead of turning up under pressure once at Lombardia and failing, or once at the European Championships and failing there too.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a rider with Vingegaard\u2019s stage-racing record, his one-day CV remains remarkably sparse. His best WorldTour Classic result is eighth at Clasica de San Sebastian in 2021, while his only one-day victory came at the Drome Classic in 2022.<\/p>\n

He did not contest a one-day race in 2023. His only such start in 2024 came at San Sebastian, where he failed to finish, and his return to championship racing at the 2025 European Championships also ended in a DNF. He did not start a one-day race at all in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a discipline he has not learned yet,\u201d Lund said. \u201cHe should have the attributes for it, but he has not managed to make it work yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to Mikkel Bjerg, who rode the Giro for UAE, he feared that the Dane was in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,43199,5900,152079,82,1422],"class_list":["post-956428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-giro-ditalia","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-mikkel-bjerg","tag-sports","tag-tadej-pogacar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}