Jonas Vingegaard's teammate Victor Campenaerts was just one of many members of the VIsma-Lease a Bike staff and riders celebrating at the summit of Colombier le Vieux after the Danish leader simultaneously sealed his second stage win in as many days and took a massive down payment on overall victory in Paris-Nice this weekend.
After abandoning Paris-Nice last year following a heavy crash which had already seen him out of the lead, Vingegaard's latest stage victory has reconfirmed he is in a very different scenario 12 months on - just when the team needed it most.
Already on Wednesday, when he won at Uchon after dropping Dani Martínez (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) late on, there was talk of how Vingegaard's success had given Visma a huge boost to their morale after their very uneven start to the season. Then, to judge by the hugs and smiles amongst the Visma camp after stage 5, with Vingegaard confirmed as ruling supreme, that collective morale has now lifted even higher.
The Dane himself had also made a point of thanking Campenaerts for his work post-stage, telling race TV that "I got a gap even before I had to attack because of Victor.
"He did an incredible leadout today, so I wasn't over my limit [when I wanted to] try and drop the other guys."
Teammate Victor Campenaerts then paid tribute to his leader at the finish on a day when he had himself, as Vingegaard said, played a crucial role, both getting in the early break of eight, then finding the strength to launch Vingegaard on the Côte de Saint-Muzols
Campenaerts, too, explained how the day had unfolded for Visma-Lease a Bike, which culminated, as he graphically – but 100% correctly – put it, with the moment when "Killer Jonas destroyed everybody."
"First of all, there was a very hard start," he told Danish TV channel TV2, along with other reporters, "then straight away [teammate] Edoardo Affini went into a killing pace, keeping a very strong breakaway within reach, a break which was also dangerous because [three] Movistar riders jumped across.
"I tried to cover the move, I could save my legs, it was the plan indeed to go on the steep climb, and as we say in Dutch, grab everybody by the throat.
"It was quite exciting to follow on the radio. It should have been a quite exciting fight, with riders really staying in reach. But then Killer Jonas destroyed everybody."
Attacks by Vingegaard from such a long way out are unusual, the reporter reminded Campenaerts, unless it's on a big mountain climb. But in a move with more than a few shades of Tadej Pogačar's or Mathieu van der Poel's trademark long-distance attacks, the Dane opted to go for it.
"He's been very relaxed since the December training camp, he's really feeling ready for it," Campenaerts told TV2.
"So when he came to Paris-Nice" – a race Vingegaard only opted to do last-minute after an off-season training crash and illness had prevented him from doing the UAE Tour – "it was not just to do race miles, it was to come here and smash it."
The results confirmed that attitude fully, as Vingegaard's advantage stood at 2:02 at the finish on sole chaser Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-QuickStep) and 2:20 on the severely reduced group of GC rivals. Overall, his advantage on Martínez is now at 3:22, the kind of time gap usually seen in the Tour de France, not a week-long stage race.
All this, too, in a race that Visma have already won in 2024 and 2025 with Matteo Jorgenson, and which looks very likely to be going their way for a third straight year thanks to Vingegaard. But there's more to it than that.
As Campenaerts pointed out, the scale of Vingegaard's success in Paris-Nice is such that it doesn't just eclipse his rivals in the current event, but it also bodes very well for what is to come.
"Things are going very well, he's in extremely good shape, it's nice to race this way, and as a team we did an extremely good job," Campenaerts added.
"He did very good training, and he did good preparation. I'm skipping [the Volta a] Catalunya" – Vingegaard's next race – "But I'm looking forward very much to the big goals of the Giro and Tour. But first, we have to bring this to Nice."
