Might be unbelievable when you see him riding in the Tour de France, but at the beginning of this April Jonas Vingegaard was still in a complete wreck after his fall in the Itzulia.
During the press conference on the first rest day of the Tour, the Dane briefly reflected on his serious crash.
“It was so bad I thought I was going to die,” he said. “And if I had to survive, I thought to myself to stop cycling. After such a heavy crash it is certainly something you think about. Then you wonder whether it is worth exposing yourself to the risks of cycling.”
“I feel very good. I feel that I am growing. I am getting better and better. I am at a high level, much higher than I ever expected with only one and a half months of preparation,” Vingegaard says.
“Last year I took seven minutes in two days. Now we don’t know how I will react in the third week. We’ll see day by day. Of course, the closer I am, the better. But I trusted our plan last year. That worked. I trust the plan this year too.”
“I certainly do not only see Pogacar as an opponent,” Vingegaard says. “The entire top ten is an opponent. Yesterday we did not want to lose time. Maybe other people don’t understand our tactics, but that’s their problem.”