Dumoulin criticizes "humiliating" Visma | Lease a Bike performance: "They didn't go all-in"

Visma | Lease a Bike seemed to have everything in place at the start of the stage: they had Matteo Jorgenson in the leading group, and Vingegaard was surrounded by his strongest climbers. “Until Vingegaard's attack on the Madeleine, I understood Visma's tactics,” Dumoulin began his story on De Avondetappe. “They rode fantastically and followed their plan exactly. But from there on, I had big question marks.”

The first mistake was already on the Madeleine. There, Jorgenson was unable to fulfil the role he had been assigned. “If they wanted to go for broke, Jorgenson should have given it his all for one kilometer, and then Vingegaard should have attacked again. But Jorgenson actually rode at a leisurely pace to the top. The other men from the early breakaway were still able to hang on, which indicates that the pace wasn't high enough.”

A group of about eight riders crossed the top of the penultimate climb. By then, it was already clear to the former Giro winner that the yellow jersey was out of reach. “I expected them to go for plan B, for the stage win with Vingegaard. That's the only chance they have left, and who knows, you might still gain some time on Pogacar,” he added.

‘Normally, you'd put Jorgenson at the front in the valley, but Visma looked at the others, and the others looked at Visma. Ben O'Connor thought: “Bye, I'm off.” And an exhausted Jorgenson went with him. Behind them, the group with Vingegaard and Pogacar came to a complete standstill. I thought: now they're not going to win the stage, and they're not going to win the Tour. I didn't understand what the point of that was at all.

Vingegaard and Pogacar were even caught by the second group, which had initially lost two minutes. But even then, Visma | Lease a Bike didn't handle it well. "Yates is coming back, Kuss is coming back. They're going to ride at the front on the final climb, but for what? It's 3.30 minutes behind O'Connor, so too far to take the stage win. But it wasn't a quick move to prepare an attack by Vingegaard either. They didn't go for broke on the final climb. UAE even took over."

Pogacar's troops left the Dutch team in the dust on the Col de la Loze. "They thought: If it's going so slowly, we can still take over. Pogacar then took a few more seconds," said Dumoulin, who called the spectacle "humiliating," especially because they had announced big plans. “When you start the race with such big words and you ride the final climb at an even slower pace than the lone leader, it's not all or nothing.”

It was a far cry from the ride to Mont Ventoux. “I saw them racing with grit and determination. In the end, it didn't work out, but it was a fantastic ride by Visma | Lease a Bike.” Pogacar was grimacing on the wheel of his Danish rival. “He was really struggling. That's why expectations were high for today's stage. If you don't even try on the Col de la Loze, you can at least conclude that you didn't go all-in.”