Thomas and Rowe question Visma and Vingegaard decision: “What’s Jonas thinking?”

Five Tours, three Vueltas: that’s how many Grand Tours Vingegaard has raced so far. With two overall wins in France and one in Spain, the 29-year-old Dane has done rather well. He has never ridden the Giro d’Italia, but that will change this year.

It’s a decision that has been widely debated. In July, another showdown with Pogacar awaits in the Tour, and the team has repeatedly stressed that it remains the most important race of the year. Over the last two years, Vingegaard has come up short against the Slovenian, who claimed Tour wins number three and four in dominant fashion.

The Visma Dane will still take on “Pogi” this summer — but he’ll do so with the Giro in his legs. “Ballsy,” Thomas calls the decision in the Watts Occurring podcast. “And it almost never works.” The former Tour winner sees two possible explanations for the choice.

“Are they doing it to at least win a Grand Tour, almost like they’re accepting defeat against Pogi? Or are they doing it thinking: he has such a big engine that he’ll perform better in the Tour with a Grand Tour in his legs?” says Thomas, admitting he doesn’t know. “I hope it’s not already a worry that they can’t win the Tour.”

Still, the Welshman understands the choice from Visma and Vingegaard. “On one hand, it’s the Giro and that’s a huge, great race. In many ways, better than the Tour even. He’s already won the Tour and the Vuelta once, so if he wins, he’ll have all three Grand Tours,” Thomas says, looking at the trilogy.

But Thomas also sees another side — a risk, even. “If something happens to Pogi the night before the Tour, like he drops his recovery drink on his foot and breaks it,” the Welshman suggests, purely hypothetically. “You know what I mean — so he suddenly isn’t in the Tour, or he drops out in the first days. What does Jonas think then? What would he do if he knew now that Pogacar wasn’t going to ride the Tour?”

Whether something like that will actually happen remains to be seen. Rowe, for his part, has a clear view: “The second-best stage racer of this generation has to prepare 100% for the biggest bike race in the world. That’s probably the romantic side of it — you want to see the best riders in the biggest race.”

Even so, Rowe — now working as a sports director at Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale — rates Visma | Lease a Bike very highly. “I think Visma are one of the smartest teams — maybe the smartest. There will be a lot of thinking and calculating behind this that we don’t know about,” the former rider concludes.