Should Visma | Lease a Bike fear losing their beloved TTT? "Vingegaard can’t go faster than fast"

"Fortunately, this is a normal one again, haha. At this stage of the season, it's tough to pay specific attention to it, but fortunately, we have an experienced team and a few riders who have ridden in Paris-Nice. The day before the first stage of the Vuelta, we trained together and, apart from that, we mainly have a very fixed framework of agreements and procedures that every rider is familiar with. So it was a matter of repetition, even though we are riding in a new composition."

"The time and energy we have been able to put into it have been limited. We haven't held a separate training camp in the Netherlands, but we are confident in our approach. However, we did have to go back to the drawing board because Axel Zingle is no longer with us. The riders focused on stages 1 to 4 during the first few days, and I worked on the time trial in the background. From Wednesday onwards, the whole group will be working on that."

"It's a huge loss, also because Axel is a very strong rider who was also very important in Paris-Nice. Just calculate how much you lose when you suddenly have to start with seven instead of eight. However, it is what it is, and we still have confidence in our team. We're going for it."

“Ultimately, even Jonas can't go faster than fast, but it's true that, especially in the second part of the time trial, it's often the strong guys who take the lead. There is also more consistency when they're riding at the front. On a flat course, I therefore expect a lot from Victor and Matteo (Campenaerts and Jorgenson, ed.), who have a lot of absolute power. And Jonas will certainly put up a good fight.”

"I don't think it's that easy, but I think that also has something to do with the culture you come from. In the Netherlands, there is considerable attention to time trials and team time trials during the youth categories. In other cycling cultures, this is much less the case, and in Great Britain, it is even more ingrained than here. If you don't do anything about it and don't pay attention to it, we've seen often enough how badly it can go."

"I don't expect the differences between the top teams to be much greater than half a minute or so. We are definitely at a disadvantage now with one man down. The group was really keen to secure victories, but I don't think that's a realistic goal anymore with the loss of Axel. The level will be very high, with all the top teams well prepared with good equipment."

“I would say Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. And Jayco-AlUla is traditionally strong in this discipline, although I don't have the information available to me right now about which riders they have started here. Then there's UAE Team Emirates-XRG, and of course, I hope that we will still be able to compete.”

“It's mainly that at a time like this, you can say that it's a great discipline. 24.1 kilometers is also a considerable distance, so the differences in the rankings are not primarily in the minutes. The team time trial is also part of the sport, as a model of innovation and progress. It's a fantastic discipline.”

“Haha, no, they'll have to organize that properly.”

Bram van der Ploeg ( Twitter: @BvdPloegg | email : [email protected])