MADRID, 18 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) acknowledged this Monday that he expects “tough attacks and stages” in the last and definitive week of the Tour de France, a race in which he is the leader, at the same time that he insisted that the duel for the title will be a “face to face” with Tadej Pogacar (UAE).
“I expect many attacks and hard stages. In addition, it will be very hot and the stages will be exhausting,” Vingegaard analyzed in an interview with the Jumbo-Visma team collected by Europa Press.
The 25-year-old Dane leads the French round overall, with Pogacar, 2 minutes and 22 seconds behind, as the main rival in the tough duel for the yellow jersey. Thus, Vingegaard pointed out that this week will be a constant “face to face” with the Slovenian. “Of course they will try to attack me (UAE), with the whole team. But in the end it is a face-to-face duel, we saw it in Col du Granon and Alpe d’Huez, although the teams have a lot of impact in the stages,” he added. .
“It’s never good to lose two teammates, but luckily we have a super strong team. We just have to fight and give our best version. That way, we’ll see what we can do and if it’s enough,” he lamented, after his teammates and ‘ mountaineers’ Steven Kruijswijk, after a crash in the fifteenth stage, and Primoz Roglic, also as a result of a crash at the start of the test, abandon the Tour.
Finally, Vingegaard confessed that running in the yellow jersey is “a very special moment” in his career. “It is also winning a stage of the Tour, it is incredible”, settled the rider, who took the overall leader’s jersey in the eleventh stage, when he destroyed Pogacar attacking in the last kilometers of the Granon, where the Slovenian lost three minutes in the last five kilometers.