Jonas Vingegaard was not going to pretend otherwise. He was anxious, fearful, concerned that he was going to lose time on stage two of the Tour de France. And that was before that crash at April’s Itzulia Basque Country that threatened to upend everything.
It wasn’t the length of the ascents in central Italy that concerned him, but the steepness of San Luca, a climb on the outskirts of Bologna used every year in the Giro dell’Emilia that has ramps approaching 20%. The Tour was going up it once, and then once again. It’s the sort of punchy terrain that suits Tadej Pogačar far more than it does Vingegaard.
