Visma's Van Hooydonck criticises Evenepoel and Red Bull's Tour de France strategy: 'We Ride to Win'

Jonas Vingegaard crashed at the 2026 Tour de France and withdrew with a broken collarbone. In the Dane’s absence, Remco Evenepoel claimed two stage wins and a second-place finish in the overall standings, behind Tadej Pogačar. It was a tremendous performance, but Nathan Van Hooydonck is not pleased with the racing strategy of Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe at the Tour.

Since his early retirement, Van Hooydonck has been part of the Visma | Lease a Bike staff. Every year, the team tries to win the Tour with Jonas Vingegaard—which some consider a lost cause. “There’s a fine line between realistic and naive hope, but we’re the only team trying to win. I’d rather be asked what on earth we’re doing than have to say after Stage 4 that we’re riding for second place.”

In an interview with CyclingUpToDate , the Belgian explains why he finds Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe’s racing strategy so strange. “I was sitting next to Sven Vanthourenhout, team director at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, at Vive le Vélo. We had to predict who would win the Tour de France. I said Jonas, while Sven mentioned Pogačar. I was really surprised and asked why he didn’t say Remco.”

Evenepoel proved himself stronger than ever on the climbs. The Belgian team leader beat Pogačar on the Plateau de Solaison, then sealed the victory in the sprint. There was no attack along the way. In the penultimate stage as well, he didn’t break away from the Slovenian until late, when the latter was protecting Isaac Del Toro. He gained time then, but the gap in the general classification was already seven minutes.

Van Hooydonck therefore finds it strange that Vanthourenhout saw little chance of beating Pogacar from day one. “I couldn’t convince myself to be away from home for three weeks just to participate. We race to win. If someone ends up being better, that’s just part of the sport.”

Of course, Van Hooydonck knew that winning the Tour would be difficult, especially after the grueling first week. After Stage 6, the gap between Pogacar and Vingegaard was already nearly three minutes. “We lost more time on the Tourmalet than we expected. That just wasn’t good. We hadn’t expected Pogacar to be able to gain so much time on the descent and on the final climb, but that was mainly due to how hard Pogacar was riding.”