The Visma-Lease a Bike riders once again exchanged high-fives and congratulated each other after Jonas Vingegaard won again at the Giro d’Italia in Carì in Switzerland.
Vingegaard has now won four mountain stages and each time his teammates chased down the early attacks, gave their all, shook out the peloton on the final climb and then set up the Dane’s winning attack.
Vingegaard lived in this part of Switzerland last year and wanted to win in pink for the first time. His Visma teammates loyally bought into the plan and executed it perfectly once again.
“Jonas was really motivated to go for it all in today,” Sepp Kuss told Cyclingnews and FloBikes after high-fiving with Davide Piganzoli, who again impressed on the final climb and could target the best young rider’s white jersey as a secondary goal for the Visma team.
“When it goes uphill, Jonas is pretty unstoppable. But it wasn’t easy, we had to ride really hard to control the break on such a short stage but we’re super happy.
“I didn’t do too much… I touched the front maybe for one minute but the other guys did an incredible pace. It’s really nice to win in pink, and it was a beautiful backdrop with nice mountains, and a great team performance once again.”
Victor Campenaerts reached the finish line when Vingegaard was already on the podium celebrating victory but the Belgian rouleur again played a significant role, as all the Visma riders did their work on the front of the peloton.
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Tim Kielich and Tim Rex rode early to chase the attacks in the valley roads and on the early climbs. Then Bart Lemmen lined out the peloton all the way to the foot of the final climb.
Campenaerts is a former European time trial champion but can use his power and high pain threshold even on the climbs. His pace hurt some GC contenders and forced Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) to give up any hope of a GC result in this year’s Giro.
“The whole team did such a luxury job that my job was postponed until the climb but it’s always nice to slam on the pedals on the bottom of the climb,” Campenaerts told Cyclingnews and the Cycling Podcast.
Campenaerts revealed that Vingegaard had told the team that he did not feel the pedals before launching his winning attack on the climb to Pila on Saturday. He looked equally impressive on the 11.7km climb to Carì that kicked up in gradient after almost every hairpin.
“When I made a visual check, he had a chain on his bike but I don’t know if he felt it,” Campenaerts joked of Vingegaard.
“I think he feels very good, we feel very good as a team and we are very, very pleased with how everything is going.”
Campenaerts was careful to add a Giro caveat, based on experience and caution.
“We are in a very good way to win the Giro but history has proven that the last week of the Giro can be very surprising, so we always have to be focused until Rome.”
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