Vingegaard's compatriot slams Bruyneel for 'nonsense' comments: 'Letting Lance Armstrong make a comeback didn’t make him any wiser'

Visma | Lease a Bike remains firmly committed to its plan to secure its third Tour victory with Vingegaard. In 2024 and 2025, the Dane fell short, while this year he crashed hard and broke his collarbone. By then, he was already far behind his Slovenian rival. Bruyneel recently said on his podcast THEMOVE that he believes Vingegaard’s chances at the Tour are over.

"Something tells me—and I don't have any information on this, it's purely a hunch—that Jonas is at his limit. We don’t know for sure, because he dropped out of the Tour de France, but he would never have come close to Pogačar. Maybe he would have finished second. He won the Giro in dominant fashion and the Vuelta a year earlier, but Visma wants to win the Tour. And Jonas isn’t going to win the Tour, unless something happens to Pogačar.”

The Belgian thinks the two-time Tour winner won't continue his career for much longer. “Project Jonas for the future is over. From what I understand from people who have some inside information from Denmark and the surrounding area, Jonas won’t be racing much longer. He has other priorities, but he won’t be racing until he’s 35. He’ll ride for another two or three years.”

Those comments rubbed Holm the wrong way, and he came to Vingegaard’s defence on Eurosport. “I think it’s really stupid when people say that Vingegaard can’t ride anymore and that he’ll probably quit soon. Just look at the results he’s achieved this year. It’s incredible, and then we have to read nonsense like that,” the Dane grumbled.

"If he had been Vingegaard's team director, I can guarantee you 100 percent that if he were working for Visma now, he would say that Vingegaard is still going to win the Tour," he continues. "I can guarantee you that." Moreover, Holm finds these comments rather strange, given Bruyneel’s history with Lance Armstrong.

"A man who is now condemning Jonas to death, after he himself tried to bring Armstrong back—someone who had already been on a break for three or four years. It's actually pretty funny. Something happens when you stop competing; you start sitting back and trying to be clever. It wasn’t a stroke of genius to have Lance Armstrong make a comeback. He didn’t get any wiser from it,” Holm concludes.