Thomas Dekker hits back at Tom Dumoulin over Jonas Vingegaard’s gearing: ‘He’s looking for something’

Stage 6 of the Tour de France immediately revealed the balance of power between the race’s biggest names. Tadej Pogačar proved considerably stronger than his rivals, while Jonas Vingegaard emerged as the second-best rider on the day. After the stage, however, Tom Dumoulin questioned one of the Dane’s equipment choices. Laurens ten Dam and Thomas Dekker have now responded to that criticism.

First, the facts. After the stage over the Tourmalet, in which Vingegaard lost considerable time to Pogačar, Dumoulin expressed surprise at the Dane’s decision to ride with only one front chainring. According to the former Giro d’Italia winner, that left Vingegaard with only eleven or twelve gears to choose from at the rear, which he did not consider a sensible setup for a demanding mountain stage.

“If you are climbing the Tourmalet at 25 kilometres per hour and notice that the gear you are pushing is just slightly too heavy, you want to be able to shift smoothly into an easier gear,” Dumoulin explained. “But because you only have twelve gears in total, the jumps between them are much too large. The result is that, on a climb, you are very often pedalling either just a little too lightly or just a little too heavily.”

That criticism was firmly rejected by Visma | Lease a Bike one day later. Team director Marc Reef said Vingegaard had already used the setup on several climbs and during several stages. “That is certainly not what made the difference. Jonas has experience with it and has been riding this way for years. It is not something we are going to change for stages like this. It really was the right choice.”

The subject was subsequently discussed by the hosts of the Live Slow Ride Fast on Friday evening, following Stage 7. Ten Dam first provided some context. “Tom says that you then only have twelve or thirteen gears. Normally, with two sets of twelve, you have 24 gear combinations, so the jumps become bigger.” Ten Dam also suggested why Dumoulin might personally have avoided such a setup. “Tom was very sensitive to how a bike felt, so he would not have wanted those large jumps.”

“Who do you think understands this better? Who do you think has researched it more thoroughly?” Dekker responded sharply. “Visma | Lease a Bike and Vingegaard, who has already won the Tour several times, or Tom Dumoulin? Vingegaard is, of course, a much better rider than Tom Dumoulin. When a team has examined something properly and thought it through…”

Dekker continued: “It is an entertaining thing to say for the audience, but based on what I have seen over the past few years, I have a great deal of confidence in the technical department at Visma | Lease a Bike.” Ten Dam therefore concluded that the single-chainring system probably would not have suited Dumoulin personally. “No, but there were a lot of things at Visma | Lease a Bike that did not work for Tom Dumoulin,” Dekker replied.

Dekker then explained his own view of the situation. “As far as I am concerned, they leave absolutely nothing to chance. This is simply looking for something to blame,” he said, remaining critical of Dumoulin’s theory. So what did he believe was the real reason for Vingegaard’s difficult day on Stage 6? “I think we identified exactly what went wrong yesterday: he had been instructed not to respond to the first explosive move from Isaac del Toro or Pogačar.”

“You could then see that Pogačar had to slow down after Del Toro launched his move,” Dekker continued. “That is where Vingegaard made a small tactical error, because his instinct might have told him: I can close the gap just before the summit, and then we can begin the descent together. In my view, that is the correct and only explanation. To start examining the gears after that…” Dekker concluded.