Jonas Vingegaard had never finished outside the top ten in a Tour time trial. Just a month ago, he had gotten the better of Pogacar at the Dauphiné, and yesterday in Caen was supposed to be the day he would strike his first blow against the Slovenian. That was not the case, and by the end of the time trial, he appeared as the day's big loser.

It's difficult to understand what happened at Visma-Lease a Bike, because Edoardo Affini finished third, but Vingegaard and Jorgenson, who are the team's classification riders, were well below expectations.

The Dane lost 1'21" to Evenepoel. But the most painful thing was that Pogacar beat him by 1'05" and such a significant delay for Vingegaard, after just 5 days of racing, had never been seen before.

Even sports director Grischa Niermann could not hide his disappointment and began to question what had gone wrong, because it was evident that something for Vingegaard and Jorgenson did not go as it should have. "Until the start of the time trial, everything was fine," he said. "But after a few kilometers, Jonas was eight seconds behind Remco. And from there, he continued to lose more time".

Niermann currently finds no explanation, because it's not about equipment or wind, but something didn't work. "It's not a matter of wind or strategy. In a time trial like this, strategy doesn't matter. It's about pushing from start to finish, and even the technical sections were not a problem. Jonas simply didn't have enough power."

Vingegaard's time trial was so negative that even his main rival, Tadej Pogacar, was surprised. Usually, the strongest riders at the Tour de France are cautious in judging their rivals' mediocre performances, but even the Slovenian was surprised. Jonas is certainly a very light rider, and a course like Caen's does not help riders like him, but even in this case, weight cannot be blamed.

And what should we expect now? Certainly, the Tour is still long and no mountain has been climbed yet, but now Visma will have to take action. "The result in Caen will not change our approach. It's up to us to recover the lost time. Is this deficit larger than expected? Yes. Did we expect it? No. But the situation is what it is. We will make amends starting today. At this point, we must become more aggressive and somewhere we need to try to recover that time if Jonas wants to win the Tour. We did not expect such a big defeat, but it happened and we must start from here and we will fight again starting today."