Jonas Vingegaard has issued a measured reaction to his Tour de France exit, saying that it’s “no use hanging your head” and even that “it’s going surprisingly well”.
Vingegaard, the two-time winner and second overall in this Tour, crashed out on Sunday’s stage 15 after slipping out through a right-hand corner and breaking his collarbone.
He was taken in the race ambulance to the medical truck near his team bus in Vougy, in the valley below the summit finish, and he then boarded that bus, where he remained for more than half an hour.
Vingegaard initially declined to speak to the media gathered outside, instead climbing straight into a team car that took him to his hotel, but he did later give an interview to Danish television channel TV2.
“It's going surprisingly well. It's of course very disappointing for us to end up like this, and for the Tour to end like this. But that's how cycling is. Luckily, it's only a broken collarbone,” Vingegaard said in comments that have been translated via an online machine.
“Of course it's a huge shame. We're disappointed, and I just hope the boys can now focus next week and hopefully win a stage or two.
“I just talked to my family a little bit. That was the most important thing for me. We've come up with a plan for what's going to happen now, and I've talked to some of the team. It's no use hanging your head. It just makes it worse.”
How, and why, did it happen?
Vingegaard then explained his view on what happened in the crash, which occurred with 21km to go on the approach to the final climb on stage 15. His Visma-Lease a Bike team were on the front, and he sat fourth in line as they turned right on the inside of a roundabout but on the outside of a traffic island that split the road.
“We maybe came into this roundabout a little too fast, and then my front wheel just slips. I can't do anything,” Vingegaard said.
“That's how cycling races are sometimes. It's just super annoying for us, to be honest.”
Vingegaard’s team director Marc Reef appeared to question certain aspects of safety in the incident, noting that the motorbike in front of the peloton was ‘panicking’ and braking, but also suggesting that the route was to blame in what he termed a ‘strange situation’.
“Maybe the motorcycle makes a mistake, but we can't trust the motorcycles. We have to have our own judgment,” Vingegaard reasoned. “People make mistakes, and we can't change that now.”
Vingegaard also addressed speculation from the race leader Tadej Pogačar that the anti-doping test he had to submit at 2 am that morning might have had a knock-on effect on his concentration and perhaps contributed to the crash.
“It is clear that it has not done anything good for it, you could say. Whether that is the reason, I dare not speculate. It may well have done something. I should not be able to say that,” Vingegaard said.
“I don't want to blame it on that, because it's a bicycle race, and crashes happen in bicycle races. So I don't dare answer that.”
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