Like any Tour de France champion, Jonas Vingegaard's path to victory began to improve after a 3-week, 3,350km journey through four different countries.
Vingegaard won his first Tour title on Sunday (July 24), traveling to Paris to receive the trophy he had won a few days earlier with his dominance of the mountains and the help of the team dominating cycling, Jumbo-Visma.
He started the 21st leg, the final leg without a contest, with a 3-minute, 34-second lead over Tadej Pogacar, who has completed two years of dominating the Tour de France. Geraint Thomas, the 2018 Tour winner, is in third place. This is the first time since 1989 that all three riders on the podium have won the Tour de France.
In his first Tour in Denmark, Vingegaard, 25, from North Jutland, became the second Danish to step up the podium on the Champs-Elysees with a beautiful backdrop of Khai Hoan Mon.
Vingegaard was used to that picturesque scene in Paris. Last year, he was runner-up on that podium, 5 minutes and 20 seconds behind Pogacar, who at that time was 22 years old and looked unmatched. But that thinking does not exist in Vingegaard, who should not have stood on the podium to receive the award.
Many people will start his story a few years ago. They will share the scene of Vingegaard working in a fish packaging facility to earn money for his cycling hobby. That story, too rich to ignore, happened before he signed for the Jumbo-Visma professional team in 2019.
But if you ask Vingegaard himself, he would say he starts to believe that a day like this could happen in the first Tour he participated in last year. Jumbo-Visma star Primoz Roglic, who dropped the 2020 Tour title in the penultimate leg, had a serious problem in the third leg and withdrew before the ninth leg in 2021.
Vingegaard, who has the only Grand Tour experience finishing 46th in the Vuelta a Espana last year, has been promoted to the top of the group. He was in fifth place at the time.
We cant hide him behind Primoz anymore, Vingegaard said.
3 days later, Vingegaard had a boost in his young career, surpassing Pogacar in Mont Ventoux - "The Monster of Provence", one of the iconic climbing spots of the Tour. Pogacar has caught up with the help, and the title is not threatened, but it is a sign that Vingegaard can do something.
This year, Vingegaard visited the Tour de France for the second time as a co-ledge with Roglic. Once again, Roglic had an accident and parted ways before the 15th stage. This time, Vingegaard chased Pogacar in the Alps and took the lead in the Pyrenees.
Jumbo-Visma not only lost Roglic but also Dutch racer Steven Kruijswijk, who finished third in the 2019 Tour. But their depth of squad helped Vingegaard win glory. He was led by Wout van Aert, this year's top water turbocharger, and American Sepp Kuss.
The Dutch team - first finishing in the Top 5 at the Tour in 1998, had famous finishers such as Dutchman Michael Boogerd, Russian Denis Menchov, Danish Michael Rasmussen or other Dutchmen such as Robert Gesink and Kruijswijk. Then came Roglic, the former ski champion, and now Vingegaard, who was alone in the spotlight of Paris, no longer having to hide his face...
