Are Visma–Lease a Bike And Vingegaard Racing For 2nd At The Tour de France? | GCN Racing News Show

Welcome back to the GCN Racing News Show. With Tadej Pogačar holding a commanding lead at the Tour de France, we’re asking a big question: have Visma-Lease a Bike and Jonas Vingegaard given up on winning? We analyze their tactics from the second week and discuss the signs that might point to a shift in strategy.
We’ll also wrap up all the major action from an eventful second week, including the mountain stages, the time trial, and Remco Evenepoel’s abandon. Plus, we have the results from the Baloise Ladies Tour, where a rising star took the first GC win of her career.
Finally, we pay tribute to Samuele Privitera, the young Italian rider who tragically lost his life last week.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Welcome to the GCN Racing News Show
00:26 This Week in Racing: Non-Wins & Sockless Sprints
01:06 LEAD STORY: Have Visma Given Up On Winning The Tour?
02:17 A Look Back: How Visma Won in Previous Years
04:03 A Shift in Tactics: Are They Now Hunting Stages?
06:08 Tour de France: Week 2 Wrap-Up
07:24 The Mountain Time Trial & Remco’s Abandon
09:06 GC Standings & The Battle for the Jerseys
12:14 Abandons & Injuries from Week 2
13:05 Baloise Ladies Tour: Full Race Recap
14:27 In Memoriam: A Tribute to Samuele Privitera

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Have Visma decided that stage wins are on the agenda rather than overall victory? Let us know in the comments 👇

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📸 Photos – © Velo Collection (TDW) / Getty Images & © Sirotti Images

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Welcome back to the GCN racing news show. Coming up this week, as TAD Pagata and UAE continue to dominate the tour to France, I’m asking whether Vizma and Vigor have given up on winning it. There are a couple of signs that point in that direction. I’ll also be wrapping up the rest of week two of the race as well as the Balois ladies tour. [Music] This week in the world of racing, we learned that even the classiest of riders can celebrate a non-win. Paul Julon Alfleet crashed at the start of yesterday’s stage, but still managed to get in the break and still managed to beat Wanar in the sprint for third. His radio hadn’t been working since that crash, so he had no communication for the rest of the day. We also learned that Primos Rogich made the headlines last week for going sockless, which was quite the sight on stage 12 to Oticam. According to Roglitch himself, he just wanted to even his tan lineup. I reckon he just did it to stir things up a little. Either way, it did get a lot of attention, didn’t it, that day. And finally, we learned that Tade Pagatcha has a very comfortable lead at the top of the GC standings at this year’s Tour of France with two stage wins in the second week. One on Ocam and one on the Mountain Time Trail. He sits 4 minutes 13 in front of second place Yonas Vingugore on GC after 15 stages. The only time he’s been more comfortable than that by this point in the tour to France was back in 2021. At that point he was over 5 minutes clear of Rigaboto Iran going into the second rest day with Vingugore at 532. That is despite his crash on Wednesday’s stage which looked like it might not the stuffing out of him ahead of the key mountain stages of this year’s race. But that wasn’t the case. Quite the opposite in fact as Pagatar rode off almost from the foot of Ocam. Being a goal by his own admission wasn’t his normal self. He conceded over two minutes to his big rival that day. Although he was better the next day in the mountain time trial, he still lost time to Pagata there and again the following day into Super Banet, albeit only a handful of seconds there. The question is then, do Vizma and Vingore still believe in their chances to win this year’s tour to France? Well, let’s take a look back at tours that Vingore has won in the past. So in 2022, Yumbbo Vizma, as they were at the time, won a total of six stages. Two of those were Vingugore himself. Another three were wards. That was the year in which he won solo into Calali from the bunch in an uphill finish of stage eight into Lan and then on the penultimate day’s individual time trial. Now W Fernard is kind of an exception to the normal rule of keeping all your lieutenants around you. He’s a very highly paid rider with big ambitions of his own. Ambitions that in his pomp he was able to accomplish while still being there for Vingore whenever he was needed. The other stage win that they got that year was for Kristoff Laaport who won what was effectively a bunch sprint into Cahour on stage 19. By that point Vingore was almost certain of winning overall. So the team could afford to allow riders to go for their own glory much like Tim Wellins did for UAE yesterday. Then in 2023, Vizma only won one stage. That was the hilly individual time trial where Vingor annihilated everybody else including Pagatcha. The rest of the time, Vizmo were 100% behind the DNE for his and their own ambitions of winning the race overall for a second time, which they accomplished. Now, I mentioned this briefly on last week’s racing news show. I was a little surprised to see Simon Yates win a stage at the end of the first week, not because I didn’t think he was capable of it, far from it, but rather because I was surprised he was given the freedom to use that energy rather than putting all of it into helping Vingore win the race for a third time. Now at that point we hadn’t had any large mountains and Vingore managed to stick with Pagatcha on all of the smaller clims. Since then though the hierarchy has very much been established and we’ve seen Vizma allowing almost all their riders freedom to go for their own results in stages. Vanart as you would expect but also Sepkus Simon Yates again and Victor Campernonard. They’ve also given Jorgensson and Carlons to go in the moves himself but unfortunately for him UAE haven’t. There’s certainly a bit of beef going on there, isn’t there? Anyway, the question I was asking myself whilst watching all of this was, does the way that they’re racing indicate that they’ve given up on beating Pagata overall this year? I mean, you’d understand why if they have, he’s looked infallible up to this point. But then again, he’s also looked infallible in the past until he’s come undone. My personal conclusion is that they’re simply being realistic. They are aware that the previous weaknesses of Pagata, so high altitude, high temperatures, accumulated fatigue, etc. have not been weaknesses for the last 18 months to two years. And they certainly don’t appear to be in this edition of the race. And so their tactics currently make sense, don’t they? There’s no point in saving all the energy of your domestics to make every climb and every stage as hard as possible when the person that will currently benefit the most is racing for a different team. So it seems to be that they are looking to get as much as they can out of this race in the knowledge that the odds of Pagata are completely cracking or Vingor suddenly managing to drop him as slim. I mean never say never. Anything can happen as his crash last week show, but the chances are very low. So if you’re staring down the barrel at second overall in the race as a team that’s won this race twice, it makes complete sense to try and pick up as many stage wins as you can along the way. At the end of the day, the sponsors still pay the bills and so the more exposure you can get for them, the better it should be for the team long term. Let me know what you think at home. Does it look to you like Vizma are riding in a way that says they resigned themselves to second place overall? Or do you think they’d be racing in the same way even if Vingore was close to or in the yellow jersey as race leader? You can let me know in the comment section just below this video. Right, let’s properly wrap up the second week of racing. Now it started with an incredible win for Jonas Abrahamson of Uno X Mobility. I actually took a deep dive into how he did that. All the power data and that he uploaded to Straa 2, which you can find here on the G10 Racing YouTube channel. It was such a great win though in so many respects. I think a lot of us enjoy seeing underdogs win and Uno X really fit that bill at the moment. It was on that day that Pagata crashed. Quite a rare sight for the world champion. led many to wonder whether he’d be 100% the following day, which was the first mountain summit finish of the race. Vizma pressed the pace on the earlier mountains that day, even dropping their own key rides at a point in the process. But when they hit the foot of the Ocam, UAE took matters into their own hands. It’s quite a familiar site really, wasn’t it? Riders dropping one by one under the ferocious pace they set with Pagata launching himself very early on the climb. He got a gap, but it stayed at 10 seconds to Vingigore, just long enough for us all to wonder whether he might get back on terms with Pagatcha. But then the elastic snapped and we later found out that Pagata hadn’t sped up towards the top of the climb. In fact, Lipovich did the final 3ks at almost the same speed, but rather that Vingore blew up. It put Pagato in quite a commanding position in GC, and he made things even more comfortable for himself in the next day’s mountain time trial. Luke Plap set an early benchmark which turned out to be a very respectable ride on the day. Only Primos Roglitch could unseat him but then Vingore crossed the line 44 seconds quicker catching a pool in the process whilst Pagata went 36 seconds quicker again. For apool it was the beginning of the end. That evening he put an Instagram post up saying it was a very bad day on the bike but that giving up is not in his nature. Uh the following day he was in trouble from the first client and Sue made the decision to climb off and into his team car. Just before he did so though, which is a really nice touch, he gave a bead on to a young fan on the side of the road. And it was a real shame for him and a real shame for the race. Let’s be honest, when he’s good, he is so good. But at the moment, he lacks the consistency that his key rivals seem to have at the Grand Tours. Obviously, his preparation took a severe dent last winter when a posty opened their van door on him, which didn’t help. And that’s the latest really in what’s become quite a long line of bad crashes followed by the inevitable rehab. Here’s hoping he gets a properly consistent uninterrupted run into these key goals next season. And now that day we had a win from the breakaway. It looked for a long time like UAE were trying to take a third stage win on the trot for Pagata, but leading into up the final climb they either eased off or they just couldn’t match the pace set by Tamman Arensman of Inos. And I actually wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter. Aaronman was so strong on the final two climbs that day. They’d have had to have gone really deep to bring him back. So fair play to him. That was quite the ride. And he almost single-handedly saved Inos race up to that point. By the end of the stage, the gap between first and 10th on GC was 22 minutes and 57 seconds. The last time the gap between those two positions was that big at that stage in the Tour to France was all the way back in 1997. And then there was stage 15 yesterday. Another one that was flat out pretty much from start to finish. The break formation phase was non-stop crazy. Made even more dramatic by a crash that brought down the likes of Alfalipe and held up Leaper Vitz and Vingore. It was a long chase of both of those two to get back on because the attacks at the front just never seemed to stop. All was okay in the end, but let’s just hope that Leapit is not too badly banged up ahead of the final tough week. Meanwhile, out front, Tim Wellins pulled the I’m not working because I’m here defending card in almost every group that he found himself in. But that’s the benefit that you have when you’re leading the race with your teammate. The pressure is off you, but on others who can start to become desperate. So, yes, he took advantage of that, but by the same token, he was incredibly strong yesterday. He attacked a group containing the likes of Simmons and Campernards. And despite a fairly quick reaction behind him, he pressed on so hard that the elastic snapped as he rode off to his first career win at the Tour of France, making him the latest rider to have completed a trilogy of Grand Tour stage wins at the age of 34. Doing it in the Belgian dri will make it all the more special for him, won’t it? So, here is the GC with six stages remaining. Pagatar’s lead over Vingugore is 4 minutes 13. It’s a further 3 minutes 40 back to Lipovitz in third whilst Oscar Onley is in fourth. More on him in a second. Valaran didn’t drop the time I expected him to in the High Mountains last week. He sits in fifth. 13 seconds in front of Roglitch who’s sixth. Felix Gal is in 12 minutes back in seventh. Then Johannes then Rodriguez who’s got himself back into the top 10 curt infiltrating a couple of breakaways. Then Ben Healey rounds out the top 10. Jonathan Milan is still in the green jersey, but he’s a lot more uneasy in it than many would have expected by this point. His advantage is 28 points over Bagata, 41 over Vanderpool, and with the terrain we’ve still got to come in the race, that one could come down to the wire. As could the K competition, Lenny Martinez leads that one after some impressive mountain breakaway exploits last week, but he’s only eight points clear of Pagata, whilst Tamman Arensman will also have his eye on that prize, I’d imagine. He’s only 12 points off the lead himself. Right, back to Oscar Onley briefly. A few of you in the comments last week pointed out that I didn’t really give enough kudos to him for how he’d been riding up to that point, and you were right. The fact that he’s backed up that first week with an equally impressive second in the high mountains is quite incredible. As things stand, he’s 1 minute 25 from the third step of the podium and the white jersey of best young rider. And even if that doesn’t materialize over the last week, he and his team must be over the moon. It must be way beyond any of their expectations pre-race. So congrats to both Oscar and to his team. Like Uno X picnic post develop underdogs who are overperforming at this race. I’m really looking forward to seeing how he gets on this last week as I’m sure you are too. I just hope this hasn’t been a commentator’s curse. Uh just before I move on, a note on a few others who’ve been forced to head home from the race early. Matias Scalmos of Le had high hopes of getting into the breakaway on Saturday’s stage only to crash into a central reservation and later abandon the race. A real shame for him and his team, but I guess the one saving grace is they can now fully concentrate on the green jersey. Steph Crass also abandoned on the same day, which is really hard to watch at the time because he was so emotional about it. Understandably, I guess the tour to France is a big pressure cordon and the last thing you want to do is pull out. Bion Kakar didn’t start stage 14 due to a hand injury whilst Leonard Vanvelt didn’t start yesterday. He’d not really been himself after crashing at the Belgian Nationals and again on the opening weekend of the race. Okay, a quick reminder now that you can watch a full season of bike racing live on Discovery Plus and Max where you would have been able to see the Balois ladies tour. It took place over six stages in 5 days last week in Belgium. Zoe Bagstet of Canyon Strand gave a sign of things to come by winning the opening 3.1K prologue. almost two seconds in front of Ellen Van Djk. Third that day was Charlott Cole and it was the picnic postnel rider who went into the race lead the following day as she won the sprint in the knocker heist. Ninka Vanhovven of Vizma won stage two which was also a bungee sprint but then came the express train that is Zoe Bagstead. She made a late attack on stage 3A out sprinting Marie Shriber to the line and then backed that up by winning the individual time trial in the afternoon. She was over 4 seconds in front of Van Djk there. That put her in the race lead by 12 seconds going to the final stage in Zahan. And as that one finished in a bunch sprint won by Martina Fidanza, she would take the first GC win of her career. Her backstep now has six career wins to this point and five of them have come over the last month. Seems a real shame actually. She’s not competing at the tour to France fam Alex Zift this year. Canyon Stram announced their roster ahead of the start of the Balawars’s ladies tour because it feels like she would have had a really good chance of winning a stage given her form right now. A reminder actually that that race starts the L to France fam this coming Saturday and we’ll have a preview show for you this coming week should be out tomorrow on Tuesday. Okay, I’m going to finish this week with the incredibly sad news that came from the duo chicista de la Valdasta Mlancc last week. So on the opening stage of that race, Samueli Privetera of the Hoggins Burman Jacob team was involved in what would turn out to be a fatal crash. Reports say that he hit a speed bump and lost control of his bike, crashing heavily as a result. He was resuscitated by medics at the sea, but then passed away later that night in hospital. Tributes flooded in for Privetera from the world over, but I’m going to quote his team manager, Axel Merks. To lose him is devastating beyond words. Personally, I’m struggling to express the sadness I feel, but I’m deeply grateful for every moment we share with him and for the joy he brought to our team every single day. He loved the bike. He loved the camera. He loved to smile. He loved to laugh. But most of all, he loved his family and his teammates. And it is to his family, his teammates, and his friends that we at GCM would like to offer our sincere condolences. I am so sad for your loss, and I’m also so angry for your loss. How can it be that young cyclists are still dying this sport in UCI sanctioned races? Uh, we need to do something about it. Not gear ratios, not handlebar widths, but something that actually stops riders dying. Rest in peace, Samuel.