Visma | Lease a Bike gets through Vuelta opener safely, but it nearly went wrong in Germany: "We can't dwell on this for too long"

In the Vuelta, Visma | Lease a Bike’s main goal was to keep leader Jonas Vingegaard safe. The 'Killer Bees' managed to keep the Danish climber near the front, especially in the closing kilometers, allowing him to avoid the chaos of the bunch sprint. “It was a good day today,” sports director Jesper Mørkøv said about the stage in Italy, which was won by Jasper Philipsen.

“Our riders delivered a strong performance. We brought Jonas safely through the finale, which was the most important thing.” Once that objective was secured, Axel Zingle was given the green light to go for his own result. The Frenchman tried to get involved in the sprint, but it didn’t work out. “In the sprint we also tried with Axel, but unfortunately he was too far back in the final kilometer to fight for the prizes.”

In the Deutschland Tour, Brennan was arguably the top favorite to win stage three. But that plan was derailed by a wild move from Van Poppel. “First and foremost: the guys rode brilliantly,” said sports director Robert Wagner, maintaining a positive outlook. “We expected UAE to set a hard pace on the climbs, but after the toughest climb we still had five men in the front group. That’s when we decided to work together to keep the other sprinters behind us. In the end, the race was just two hundred meters too long.”

Visma | Lease a Bike wants to move past the incident in the final kilometer quickly. “Matthew got boxed in and didn’t get the chance to really sprint today. That’s just part of sprinting. Luckily he can put things like this into perspective quickly, which is one of his strengths, and he’s already fully focused on tomorrow. We can’t dwell on this for too long. We rode an almost perfect stage and the atmosphere within the team is still excellent.”