Jonas Vingegaard will be well at the start of the European championships this Sunday on the roads of Drôme-Ardèche. But the Danish seems to be wondering what he is doing there.
In cycling, there are sometimes two worlds that oppose, that of stage races and that of the classics, the races of a day. Tadej Pogacar is the link between the two, unlike Jonas Vingegaard, who pushes specialization to caricature.
Like a Christopher Froome in his time, the Danish takes care to avoid the classics. It is not too much his cup of tea, these races of a day when you sometimes have to rub, and try blows, even if it means burning your wings. The leader of the Visma-Lease A Bike prefers stages races, where it is often easier to control the debates, and where its qualities of endurance and recovery are best expressed.
Jonas Vingegaard, the vain of the return.
Thus, the number of day races played by Vingegaard since the start of the 2023 season is … one. It is the Clasica San Sebastian, last year, where he had abandoned. On the big classics, its best result is an 8th place on the clasica, precisely, and a 14th place on the Tour de Lombardie, each time in 2021. At the time when it was still discovered.
Vingegaard and the classics, it does not take
But here is Vingegaard, after skipping the Worlds, starting from the online race for the European Championships. The Hillerslev climber will be one of the cards of a fairly royal Danish training, with also Mads Pedersen and Mattias Skjelmose. A real attraction, truly, because one wonders if the winner of the Tour de France 2022 and 2023 is capable of competing with Pogacar on this type of racing.
The main interested party does not seem to be fully convinced, and makes this fairly surprising admission. “I dream of performing on the day’s races. If I have not participated in many races of a day in recent years, it is because I have not yet really discovered how to shine, he explains in words reported by Wielerfliets. The only time I won a day’s race was the day after another. So, we can’t really talk about a day. »»
Vingegaard refers to the Drôme-Ardèche loops, which argue over two days. After a 33rd place on the Faun-Ardèche on Saturday, he won the Drôme Classic on Sunday, in front of the beautiful people (G. Martin, Cosnefroy, Alaphilippe and a very young Ayuso). Chance or not, these European championships are competed on the roads of Drôme-Ardèche. A good omen?
