Jonas Vingegaard had to admit his superiority to Tadej Pogacar in the fourth stage of the Tour de France. In the last kilometer of the Col du Galibier he could not follow the Slovenian, but the leader of Visma was positive afterwards.
“We expected to be 3-0 behind, so maybe that’s a small victory,” he said. “We came here believing that we would lose time, the three out of the first four stages. So to only lose time in one of them is pretty good, in my opinion.
“I would say I expected to be two minutes down or maybe more, so to be only 50 seconds behind is still quite good. My time will come, or our time will come.”
“I would have liked to close the gap instead of it ending up opening even more,” Vingegaard explained. “I think for the first part of the downhill I kept the gap then the second part is where gravity helps you out a bit more.
“I think it helped Tadej out in this situation. So I think that’s just how it is and I have to accept it. Of course, I would have liked to stay with him but that’s life. To be honest, I’m pretty satisfied as I was also doubting myself going into this Tour. So to only lose time in one out of three stages is more than we could have expected.”
“I think today we saw that we missed an in-form Sepp Kuss in this race,” Visma DS Grisha Niermann said. “We don’t have a climber like Sepp next to Jonas on the team.”
