Jonas Vingegaard, Danish, 26 years old, fishmonger as a young man, husband of Trine, father of Frida, is like those enviable beings who on December 12, to say one day, know where they will be and what they will be doing at 5:15 p.m. on May 3 of the following year, to put another day, and a few years in advance they already have rented the apartment to spend their holidays, always the best, at the best price, and in the first story, at the age of 17, they had already decided with his girlfriend that they would become Egyptologists and the steps they would take to end up excavating a pyramid, and they did. And perhaps on February 23, when he began the year under a snowfall in Lugo running O Gran Camiño, he already guessed that five months later, on July 23, he would be taking a photo for the cover of L’Equipe wearing a yellow jersey and holding an even more yellow sunflower (subtle homage to his Jumbo, the Dutch team, through his Van Gogh) in the courtyard of a hotel in the middle of the French countryside, where he slept on the transfer from the Vosges to Paris. There are five hours to go before the start of the last stage of his second victorious Tour at the Saint Quentin Olympic velodrome, on rue Laurent Fignon. He has won it by 5m 17s over the second, Tadej Pogacar. The biggest difference since 2014. He wears a dark shirt with three colored stripes, like a flag, pink, yellow, red, on the chest, in reference to his Tours, and the Giro and Vueltas won by his Jumbo teammate Primoz Roglic. On Saturday night, arriving at Le Markstein at 10:30 p.m., he first had a drink of a beer shared with the team’s mechanics; then he celebrated it at dinner with his colleagues, drinking a “big” real beer, a Westmalle, Trappist with 9.5% alcohol, to wash down a good piece of meat and some croquettes for dinner. “For the first time in many months we ate without thinking so much about what the correct nutritional values were, but what we wanted to eat. Time to enjoy ”, says Vingegaard, who ended the dinner with a thank you speech to his colleagues. “I told them that I was very proud of them, that I was very proud of how we raced as a team, how we followed the plan and everyone supported it. And, of course, I thanked everyone.”
Ask. Plan, plan… Is that so? Five months ago she already knew what she was going to do every day, every hour of the year that was beginning?
Answer. Yes Yes. Everything I’ve done this year has been a kind of, I wouldn’t say preparation for the Tour de France, because I also wanted to win other races, obviously, but the big goal was the Tour and everything we’ve done was for the Tour. And yes, I’m very happy with how everything went, winning in Galicia, the Itzulia, the Dauphiné… And now the Tour, of course. It has been a truly amazing year.
Q. Is there no place in your life for the unexpected? Is everything planned?
R. Yes, most of the time, in December, in the training camp, we make an annual plan and, basically, for the first half of the year I already know what I have to do, when I do it, and how, where I am going, where I am at each moment. I always know ahead of time when I travel, and I’m pretty strict. We know it well in advance. So it’s pretty easy to manage.
Q. And is it also like that in your daily life, as a couple, as a family? Don’t you have days where you don’t know what you’re going to do the next day?
R. Not so often that there is room for surprise. It’s not often that we go on a trip to a city or something, but sometimes we say at night that we want to go eat somewhere. So we go to a restaurant, that is perhaps the most impulsive thing we do, something like that.
Q. Pogacar confessed on Saturday that the weekend in the Alps, Grand Colombier, Joux Plane and Mont Blanc, he already knew that he was not well, that he was getting worse every day. Did you realize, did he realize, that he was not the great Tadej?
R. Don’t know. I mean, I think she was still at a very, very high level. It was a super good fight we had. And I’m happy with the rivalry I’ve had here with him.
Q. But even smelling it, he did not attack, he chose to follow the plan patiently, hit the time trial on Tuesday, finish off at the Col de la Loze the next day…
R. When we started the year, we believed that we would be able to win the Tour de France. Of course, you can never be 100% sure, but we just believed in it, and that’s the only thing. If you stop believing, you don’t win. We just had to keep believing, and keep believing that the plan would work at some point. We believed in our plan. We really believed in it and we followed it every day. We were always trying to fight for victory, obviously, but we were willing to die trying. Die with the plan. Some days we had the plan to be defensive, and that’s what we did. If I had seen him weak, maybe I would have tried, but I didn’t notice.
Q. Are you ever tempted to rip the earpiece out of your ear and go on an adventure?
R. No, no, but directors also sometimes tell me that if I feel there’s a time to attack, to go for it, even if it’s not planned.
Q. But, aside from that, he has been seen to be more confident in his possibilities than last year, more serene…
R. Yeah, I think I was more confident. He was more relaxed this year. More… Yes, how do you say? Just those two things. I really believed in the plan, and that gave me a lot of confidence, a lot of mindfulness…, very calm.
Q. It helps to think, for example, if I don’t win, nothing happens, I already won last year. Did you think so?
R. Yes Yes. If I win, I win, and if not, then there is nothing to do. If you lose to the best, that’s the way it is. Luckily then I could say but yeah I won it last year so it wouldn’t be a shame.
Q. From the outside it gave the impression of an exchange of personalities, Pogacar more defensive, you more attacking… As if they were two people who know each other so much that they want to be like each other…
R. Indeed. Tadej was very aggressive last year and I was very defensive… And now we have moved closer to the center. He is a little less aggressive, perhaps, and I a little more… I liked that one day he went on the attack and I the next day. It was a good fight. Very pretty for the viewer. And also Tadej and I think we have really enjoyed the fight we have had here.
Q. Is the feeling that victory in your second Tour leaves you different from last year?
R. Yes, last year it was different because it was the first time and I felt, above all, relief, and this year the feeling is like how super happy I am and super proud to have won the Tour again. And maybe it’s more important to win it a second time, but in some ways, the sigh of relief last year was much greater.
Q. Deep inside he might already know he was going to win, but maybe the fans wouldn’t see it that way. His victory of him was a confirmation before them?
Q. To be honest, I don’t really think about what other people might think. I just focus on myself. We believed that he could win the Tour de France again and we made the plan for it and really went for it. I don’t think it was to be confirmed or anything like that. I only thought about trying to win the Tour de France again.
Q. Last year, your team came out with two leaders, Roglic and you. Has this been more comfortable, only you in command?
R. Yeah, I mean, of course, for me, it’s different. You only have to think of yourself. And also, maybe our plan had to be different than it was last year. You can run differently with two leaders, of course. In that sense, it’s different, and there’s also more pressure on me, but I don’t have any problem handling the pressure. So, in that sense, for me it doesn’t matter if there is more or less pressure.
Q. I was ready.
R. Yes, exactly. I think this year I also showed that I can… If you can’t handle the pressure, you’ll never win the Tour de France in the first place. But, yes, since I worked all this year, and not only on the Tour, I think I showed, once again, that I can handle it.
Q. Could he have done the same thing last year without Roglic?
R. I think I was in a different time, I wasn’t as confident as this. Now I believe much more in my strengths as a cyclist. I just had to try to get the best of me.
Q. In a couple of months you should start thinking about the 2024 Tour. How do you face that moment? With the annoyance of starting the same routine all over again? With Ilusion?
R. No, I’m actually looking forward to it, because I’m also enjoying the preparation for the Tour de France. It’s something very special, the way we prepare. And I’m always trying to see how I can improve even more and find the little details that make the difference. I love this part of the year.
P. What would his life be if Pogacar did not exist?
R. I am very happy that he exists, because, as it is, he and I are the strongest in the Tour de France. It’s good for me and him too that we have each other, and also for the race, because I think there wouldn’t be much excitement if one of us wasn’t here.
Q. Is it a symbiotic relationship? Do you make him stronger and he you?
R. Yes Yes. It can be said like this. It makes us both stronger. Exact.
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