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A dominant stage win by Jonas Vingegaard on stage six of Tirreno-Adriatico sent a message to all who wish to challenge him at this year’s Tour de France, as he dropped all of his GC rivals on the slopes of Monte Petrano to take back-to-back victories at the Italian stage race.
With tomorrow’s final stage around San Benedetto del Tronto set to end in a sprint, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider’s general classification victory is all but confirmed, as barring any crashes he will be declared the overall winner of the race.
With one hand already on the trident trophy prior to today’s stage after a similarly impressive victory on stage five, Vingegaard almost did not have to go on the attack on the final climb. However, the Dane is clearly on amazing form at the moment, as prior to this race he took three stage wins and the overall victory at O Gran Camiño.
His attack today looked almost effortless as he rode away from Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) with around six kilometres to go, with the two riders unable to follow his wheel on the slopes to the finish.
On whether it was necessary for him to attack today, Vingegaard said in his post-race interview that “no I did it just because I like winning. The team also pulled all day today and once again it’s super nice to pay them back today. Yeah, of course also for me it’s nice that I’m able to win again today and two stage wins is a perfect week for us. Now we just have to keep the jersey tomorrow until the end”.
Bora-Hansgrohe had ridden for a lot of the stage in the build up to the final climb to set up Jai Hindley’s attack, from which Vingegaard then counter-attacked to ride away from the Australian rider.
Giving his thoughts on the moments that led up to his decisive move on Monte Petrano, Vingegaard said “they did a very high pace and in that moment we were thinking it’s good for us, because if I wanted to attack then it was good with a high pace. Then Jai Hindley went and went a few times. Then at one point I decided I wanted to try to attack myself and then it was just a time trial to the finish”.
In previous seasons, Vingegaard has usually taken a bit of time to get up to speed, as at last year’s edition of Paris-Nice he was unable to compete with Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) on the mountain stages at the race.
However, this year he seems to be in much better condition at this stage in the season. On his current form he said “I think I’m in better shape than I was last year and the year before. Of course, I’m very happy with how everything went here and I can be happy and satisfied with how we rode as a team as well. It’s been a super good week so far”.
When asked whether he was ready for tomorrow’s celebrations, Vingegaard allowed himself a smile, but did not get ahead of himself, as he said that “first we have to do the stage tomorrow, but otherwise yes”.
If he does get through tomorrow’s stage unscathed, then it will mark the eighth overall victory of his career, with only two other victories at WorldTour-level one-week stage races, with last year’s wins at Itzulia Basque Country and the Critérium du Dauphiné.
Regardless of that though, Vingegaard’s performance at this week’s race has been nothing short of what we have come to expect from the reigning Tour de France champion and is definitely a warning to some of his potential competitors, particularly Tadej Pogačar.
