Jonas Vingegaard: I just cannot believe how I made it to this level

Jonas Vingegaard was very emotional after a beautiful day of the Tour de France that saw the Danish initially being dropped by Tadej Pogacar before showing us some huge watts again while catching the yellow jersey and beating him in the final sprint.

“It’s, of course, very, very emotional for me. Coming back from the crash…,” Vingegaard said. “It means a lot. All the things I went through in the last three months… Yeah, it makes you think of that. I would never have been able to do this without my family.”

“I mean, with the crash I had, I really believed I was going to die three months ago,” Vingegaard said. “Now, sitting here with a stage victory in the biggest race of the world is really unbelievable. I would never have believed it would be possible for me to get this far.”

“I don’t think you can be in the best shape of your career with one and a half weeks of training. If I’m playing a bit the ‘victim card’ it’s because I am. Seeing where I came from, I don’t think a lot of guys would have made it to the Tour. Making the Tour was a big, big victory. I said back then that I’d take it day by day. I don’t know how the second and third week will be, but we’ll keep going.

“To be honest, I just cannot believe how I made it to this level. I only had a month and a half of proper training before this race. My injuries were so bad I had to take a lot of rest before I could start real training. But I’m here now and I’m just super happy with this stage win and how it’s going. It’s more than I would ever have expected.”