Until very recently, Jonas Vingegaard, who is 115km away from being the new Tour de France champion, He combined training on the bike with work in a fish market.
He was a shy boy, who liked cycling, largely because of his dad, Claus, and his mother, Karina, who loved the sport of cranks and pedals.
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He started working when he was 19 years old. He did it at the request of the counselors of the ColoQuick cycling team, to which he belonged, and took a job in a fish market company in the Hanstholm port.
“The most complicated thing was getting up early, going to the factory, being there for about eight hours and then getting on the bike”.
He came in at 6 in the morning, packed, washed, helped sell the fish and in the afternoon he trained. He lasted two years in that routine, until the team gave him wings and took him down the path of victory.
“The hardest part was getting up early, going to the factory, being there for about eight hours and then getting on the bike and going to train,” said Vingegaard.
And I add: “I had several problems with stress, but little by little I have been overcoming them. I have learned to know myself, to know what is wrong with me and overcome it, that taught me to employ myself in that fish market”.
Your first pedal stroke
Jonas Vingegaard was born on December 10, 1996 in Hillerslev, a town that is part of the municipality of Thisted and is located in the North Jutland Region (Denmark).
Claus is a salmon farm builder in Norway, hence Jonas’s job, while his mother is a housewife.
“He was a tenacious, determined and stubborn cyclist boy, but he had a late development due to his shyness, which made it difficult for him to win in his first years on the bike”, Karina pointed out.
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“He just had the will to hang on, but it wasn’t going well for him; Only when he became a youth cyclist did the results begin to show, but the start was not easy, ”said Jonas’s mother.
She has always said that the love of sport runs in the family. Cycling was something of a passion, since the three of them were going to spend vacations in the French Alps. It was one of the families that stood on either side of the road to watch the riders go by on the mountainous stages of the Tour.
Claus and Jonas cycled up the mountain passes. He really liked the Galibier, was a port that did well and he insisted on crowning it each time in the shortest time possible.
He broke his femur riding a bike, something that hindered him from reaching higher much younger. He waited patiently, recovered and returned to the competition.
At 25 years old, he could become the second rider from his country to win the most important stage race in the world, after he did Bjarne Riis, who was in charge of breaking the string of triumphs of the Spanish Miguel Indurain in the 1996 Tour de Francecoincidentally the year Jonas was born.
Firm step
In 2016, the sports directors of the Jumbo Visma saw him and negotiated his move to the squad. His first victory was in the sixth stage of the 2019 Tour of Poland, when he beat the likes of JAy Hindley, the reigning Giro d’Italia champion; Pavel Sivakov, and the Colombian Sergio Higuita.
He has only taken part in three three-week races. It was 46 in the Tour of Spain in 2020, test in which he put himself at the service of his partner and test champion, the Slovenian Primoz Roglic.
He joined the team of Jumbo Visma of the Tour de France last year and after Roglic’s retirement he took the reins, fought side by side with Tadej Pogacar, but not
was able to beat him.
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The opposite happened this season. He arrived as the second card of his squad; After Roglic’s loss of time, Jonas assumed the leadership of the team and this time he was able to defeat Pogacar.
Who is your right hand?
Little is known about his private life, because he does not like to talk about it. Lives with Trine Marie Hansen, who he met because she was one of the people in charge of marketing for the ColoQuick team, and who is 10 years older than him.
On September 8, 2020, the greatest joy came to his home, Frida, who is the engine, the drive for Vingegaard to obtain his victories.
Trine Marie is not only Frida’s mother, she is the one who manages the image, the contracts and others for Jonas. He warns that the most difficult thing was to change his character, but that they worked hard to boost his mood.
“Jonas has to get his feelings out. We have worked a lot on that, on making him a little more open in his attitudes and feelings,” she says.
For Trine Marie it has been easy to guide him, because she is used to making decisions and persevering in what she sets out to do, that she has taught her boyfriend.
“If you want to be a leader, then you must be a visible and clear person in your determinations. Sometimes his shyness played tricks on him, but that has changed,” said Trine Marie.
She quit her job to immerse herself in Jonas’s life. She is the one who accompanies him to meetings, helps him plan his training sessions. Every time she finishes a stage, Jonas is handed the cell phone and on the other line are Trine Marie and Frida.
“I’m older than him and that’s maybe very good, because I can take a little more responsibility in some areas that he doesn’t have to focus on,” he said.
This is Jonas Vingegaard, another young man who will adorn the Tour de France champions’ showcase, who with his 60 kilos and 75 centimeters tall will climb this Sunday to the podium in the Champs Elysées for the champion trophy, in the continuity of a short but successful career.
It will be his tenth success as a professional cyclist, very little, really, a victory that he will celebrate with Trine Marie and Frida in the port of Hanstholm.
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Lisandro Rengifo
Editor of THE TIME
@lisandroabel
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