After having his bike broken in a late crash, Jonas Vingegaard finished stage 5 of the Tour de France on teammate Victor Campenaerts' bike, avoiding total disaster as his Visma-Lease a Bike chased hard to ensure he finished on the same time as Tadej Pogačar.
Visma's lead DS Marc Reef tried to explain the hectic finale at the team bus, noting how what was a moment of mass stress ended up with the result they wanted.
While it was initially unclear whether the Dane had actually gone down, the team have since confirmed that it was due to his derailleur getting broken by a rider coming from behind amid the chaos that the change was required, and that he hadn't hit the desk himself.
"We heard that Jonas was also in the crash, or somewhere involved. Then he got immediately the bike from Victor [Campenaerts], the boys were with him pulling hard for him, and in the end I think everybody what we see now is on the same time at the finish," said Reef at the team bus to small group of reporters, including Cyclingnews.
"We knew that it was a tight corner, also with the sidewalk on the right side, or a small higher line, we knew that corner was coming. The moment how we approached the final was just good, we were together, but in the hectic crash, I think in the end, Jonas got the bike from Victor, we rode hard to the line, and it finished all on the same time."
The first sprint finish of the Tour is always crazy, but this crash occurred at the worst possible moment, just outside the 5km safe zone that all of the GC riders were hoping to arrive at in one piece. Several Soudal-QuickStep and Caja Rural riders crashed, but Vingegaard was simply held up.
In the end, Vingegaard finished the day in 53rd, on the same 14-second gap as Pogačar and all of the protagonists to stage winner Olav Kooij, with the first big mountain stage arriving on Thursday to Gavarnie-Dèdre.
Despite finishing 32 positions down on Pogačar, Visma's successful late chase allowed them to close up to the back of the main peloton, and with riders in between, the two multiple-time former winners were given the same time thanks to the three-second rule – where the gap had to be larger than three seconds to actually count as a gap at the line. Campenaerts, with whom he swapped bikes, finished 4:50 down, having had to wait for the team car to give him a new machine.
"There were riders in between everywhere, so you didn't have gaps of three seconds," explained Reef to Sporza at the finish. "There were about ten seconds between Pogacar and Jonas, but with riders in between. Then everyone is given the same time."
With the Col d'Aspin and iconic Col du Tourmalet lining the route of Thursday's important GC stage, Vingegaard will be delighted to have avoided their star actually crashing. He will start stage six in fifth overall, on the same 7:53 deficit to race leader Torstein Træen, who was one of the unlucky few who did crash in the incident, as Pogačar.
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