"Vingegaard mostly has himself to blame," say analysts after stage 19: "The stage win was within reach"

“Vingegaard has mainly ruined it for himself,” José de Cauwer said immediately after the broadcast of Sporza. “The Alps didn't bring him anything, neither yesterday nor today. And he didn't make a single attempt today.” Commentator Renaat Schotte added to his co-commentator's remarks: “Visma | Lease a Bike defended itself by saying that this was the only way to beat Pogacar.” De Cauwer responds: "And Visma is always right, but in this case, I say they are not right. I'm thoroughly convinced."

The former sports director adds: "I can see and feel it happening. Then Vingegaard is lucky, or unlucky, that Lipowitz did the dirty work for him. It was possible, Lipowitz set it up. And then he fails to do it. I find that so disappointing. And it's not that he's a coward. I take that back. However, I believe this is a missed opportunity. As sports director in the car, I would have encouraged Vingegaard to go for it, especially with Lipowitz's story."

Would one or two turns at the front have been enough to take the stage win and catch Arensman? "Probably. He could have attacked earlier from the peloton. Now he's attacking 300 meters from the finish. That's too late. There was a real chance." Still, De Cauwer sees that Vingegaard is giving it his all. “But it didn't fit with the whole story that, according to him, the Tour wasn't over yet yesterday. We saw Richard Plugge in Vive le Vélo yesterday, and he's sticking to the same story of following the plan. They tried, and it didn't work. And the chance that their plan will still work is very small.”

At the Belgian table of Vive le Vélo, the analysts also didn't understand the outcome at the top of La Plagne. "We were waiting," Bert De Backer opened the analysis. "It was clear early on that Pogacar wanted to go for the stage win. The breakaway was kept close. Pogacar's acceleration was intended to drop Vingegaard and go for the win. But Vingegaard stayed on his wheel. In a poker game, it was 1-0 for Vingegaard, and I was 90% sure that Vingegaard would attack, but he didn't. And that surprised me a lot. It was a good tactic to stay on his wheel, but then he had to go all out himself. And that didn't happen. And nobody understands that."

According to De Backer, something changed on that final climb. "Until Pogacar's first attack, you could feel that this was going to be a super exciting stage. The racing was very fast, the first big move was made, and we were waiting for the next one. That didn't happen. So we wonder what the problem was. Did Pogacar not want to give Vingegaard a 1 percent chance of winning the stage by closing the gap, or is Vingegaard so afraid of helping Pogacar win?"

Serge Pauwels, coach of the Belgian national team, has an answer. He thinks it's the latter. "Vingegaard felt he couldn't drop Pogacar. He rode with the thought that if he went all out, he wouldn't be able to drop him. And he wouldn't be able to beat him in the sprint either." De Backer summarizes the analysis once again. “It's inexplicable. Nobody understands what happened here."

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On the podcast The Move, Bradley Wiggins was also waiting for the attack that never came. "Throughout the Tour, they told us how they were going to ride, what they were going to do, how they were going to take it easy on Tadej. I think this time they did exactly what they hadn't tried in the entire Tour. They stayed behind and did nothing, letting the UAE race. This time, he could have risked a lot more to win the stage, which would have won him back the Tour. We would have been talking about him differently; he just needed to sprint 50 meters earlier, and he probably would have won the stage.“

The 2012 British Tour winner saw Pogacar make the first attack. ”Just like he normally would. But Jonas stayed on his wheel and didn't attack. That's where the anti-climax started. Jonas was able to drink his coffee and still finish second in the GC. The stage victory was within reach. He should have done everything he could to win the stage.“ However, Sir Wiggins did see Vingegaard do something he hadn't seen him do very often: ”This was the first time he was able to beat Tadej in an uphill sprint."

George Hincapie argued that the right decisions were not made in the team car and that the team failed to capitalize on a strong Vingegaard that day. "His second place was safe. He had no reason to sprint at 300 meters. As you say, if he had sprinted at 500 meters, he would have won the stage. In my opinion, it was the sports director's fault. When you've been fighting for three weeks in the Tour, the rider's heart rate is at 200 beats per minute; he's not thinking clearly. The team sports director knows how the race is going, and they should have told him when to jump. He would have finished second anyway..."