Jonas Vingegaard Set to Win Tour de France on Second Try

“Jonas was such a strong guy, but especially is such a good guy,” he said.

After Saturday’s stage, though, Vingegaard faced questions about his fairy-tale career. One reporter asked him about his rapid rise in the sport, and about how he could finish 22nd in the 2019 Danish national time trial and then go on to nearly win Saturday’s time trial after three weeks of the Tour.

If Vingegaard was familiar at all with Tour history, or Danish racing history, it was possible that he expected the question. The only other Dane to win the Tour was Bjarne Riis in 1996, and a decade later Riis admitted that he had doped to win the race. Many past winners, though none recently, have either been caught doping or have admitted to doing so.

No, Vingegaard said, he did not go fast because he had doped. It happened because he and his team improved his aerodynamics by toiling in the wind tunnel and adjusting his body position and bike.

“We’re totally clean,” he said in his news conference, broadening his denial to include his entire team. “Every one of us. I can say that to every one of you. No one of us is taking anything illegal.”

High-altitude training camps and attention to detail — in food, in equipment, in preparation — was behind Jumbo-Visma’s rise, he said. “That’s why you have to trust,” he said.

Vingegaard appears to take sportsmanship seriously. On one descent during Stage 18, Pogacar crashed on a section of gravel as he and Vingegaard zoomed down a hill nearly side by side. But instead of taking advantage of Pogacar’s fall, Vingegaard waited for him down the road, allowing his rival catch up.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/24/sports/cycling/tour-de-france-jonas-vingegaard.html