At a time when Jonas Vingegaard is launching his reconquest operation for 2025, with the objective of fighting again on an equal footing with Tadej Pogacar, Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour de France, puts forward a plausible argument to explain the domination suffered by the Dane in July 2024.
Last year, Jonas Vingegaard was largely dominated by Tadej Pogacar on the roads of the Tour de France, finishing second more than six minutes behind the Slovenian champion. If the Dane has delivered in recent weeks a very convincing explanation to explain this discrepancy, highlighting a large deficit in muscle mass, and therefore in strength, and therefore ultimately in watts, linked to his long hospitalization following his serious fall in Tour of the Basque Country, Christian Prudhomme for his part delivered a different reading of the events, without it being contradictory.
“When Vingegaard won at Lioran, we saw his retrospective fear emerge”
During an interview given to Eurosportthe boss of the Tour du France has in fact declared, regarding the outrageous domination of Pogacar in 2024: « Did I share the feeling expressed by Bardet that he was sometimes certain at the start of a race that Pogacar was going to win? In the last week of the Tour, yes. But I believed in the Lioran seesaw theory (Pogacar was reviewed by Vingegaard in the final of the stage, and the Dane won, editor’s note). Really. Not just on the finish but on Pogacar’s attack in the Puy Mary and on the fact that in the Col de Perthus, Vingegaard had the ability to come back. And then, then, in the sprint while Pogacar was impregnable a priori in this type of finish. That day, we saw in Vingegaard the retrospective fear when he wins. It really hit me, he said to himself: “I won the stage but how is that possible?” Saying to himself: “I almost got hurt even more seriously, I came back and I won.” I wonder, while I analyzed him like a seesaw, if on the contrary he had not already in a certain way finished his Tour de France ».
A psychological argument that can be understood
The psychological argument put forward by Prudhomme appears relevant, because it is obvious that by dominating that day Pogacarafter all the efforts made to come back following his terrible fall at the beginning of April, Jonas Vingegaard could more or less consciously release the feeling of having fulfilled his objective and let go of some mental ballast. An element that he will have to use to get the knife between his teeth back in 2025.
