After suffering a tyre puncture halfway in the gravel-packed chaotic Tour de France stage 9, Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) was forced to race on his teammate Jan Tratnik’s bike for the remainder of the 199km stage.
Another mechanical – a slow puncture – in the final three kilometres made a hectic day even more difficult for the two-time Tour de France champion.
The pressure put on by UAE Team Emirates for yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar ensured that the defending champion could not go back to his team car to change to his bike after his initial swap.
With 98 kilometres to go, Vingegaard jumped on Tratnik’s bike following a mechanical. With Tratnik waiting at the roadside for the team car, Vingegaard was forced to solo back to the peloton, despite having multiple teammates in the group.
Once he was back in the field, which had split, he was assisted by his Visma-Lease A Bike teammates European champion Christophe Laporte and Wout van Aert to make his way to the front of the field.
Though similar in size, Vingegaard, at 1.75 metres, is two centimetres taller than Tratnik, and had to race on a bike not perfectly suited to his body – he could be seen labouring under Pogacar's repeated attacks on the stage's gravel sectors.
UAE Team Emirates rode tactically to ensure there was no let-up in pace and the current third-place GC rider was given no slack to be able to return to his own bike.
The Dane stayed close to the front and covered the numerous attacks from both Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) and Pogačar over the remaining 11 gravel sectors.
"The change there with Jan was quick. I didn't even get into the cars or anything. I was always in the bunch," Vingegaard said at the finish. "So I think we did it super well, and I'm super happy that I came safely through today."
Vingegaard was quick to thank his teammates who sacrificed his bike to keep him out of trouble.
"They did super well today," he added. "Jan gave me the bike... And the rest of the guys, they kept me in the front the whole time I entered every sector in first position. And they even closed the gap for me one time when I couldn't follow. So yeah, I think that I owe them big time after today."
Vingagaard admitted that Pogačar was the strongest rider on Sunday's stage, especially on the sectors with looser gravel.
"On the gravel sectors, he was the strongest. It favours him also, more than it favours me, especially when it [the gravel] was looser, then the guy with my weight is not really favourable. And that's also when he got a small gap on me. It was probably the worst sector, in case of the gravel that there was so loose that I was just sliding around, to be honest, and it was, really hard for me to control the bike."
He also made it clear that he was not a fan of adding gravel stages with their "unnecessary risks" to the Tour de France.
"It was just a very stressful day," he said. "I won’t hide that I don't think that this belongs in the Tour de France."
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