A right-hand turn, the Visma Lease a Bike train leading the pace to chase the breakaway riders and the fifth rider goes down, losing his front wheel and crashing into the barrier that delimits the road: it's number 11, Jonas Vingegaard!

A few minutes on the ground, immediate assistance from the medical car, then his right arm in a sling - a sign that the collarbone has serious problems, not to mention fractured before the official statement arrives - and the Danish rider painfully gets into the car. For him, the adventure at the Tour de France is over just over 20 km from the finish of stage 15 and it is truly a major shock for the Grande Boucle 2026.

Isaac Del Toro and Felix Grossschartner from UAE and Jai Hindley from Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe also went down, but all managed to continue.

🚨 VINGEGAARD ABANDONA EN AMBULANCIA

El danés sufre una caída y se marcha con el brazo en cabestrillo.#TDF2026 #LaCasadelCiclismo pic.twitter.com/xaydngD9mJ

— Eurosport.es (@Eurosport_ES) July 19, 2026

UPDATE 6:45 PM The Tour de France says goodbye to Jonas Vingegaard. The Danish rider suffered a fractured collarbone and multiple abrasions after today's crash and so the dream of the yellow jersey fades away. For the Danish rider there will be surgical intervention in the coming days and then a recovery period and at the moment it is impossible to quantify the period of absence.

Shortly after the conclusion of the stage, the official statement from Visma-Lease a Bike also arrived, confirming the consequences of the accident. Vingegaard suffered a fractured collarbone, in addition to multiple abrasions, and will undergo surgical intervention in the coming days. A hard blow for the Danish rider, but also for the entire Dutch team, which loses its leader at the decisive moment of the race.

Until today Vingegaard held second place in the general classification, with a gap of 4'30" from the yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar. An important deficit, but not yet considered definitive by the two-time Tour winner.

The Danish rider and Visma-Lease a Bike continued to believe in the third week, the one traditionally more favorable to Vingegaard's characteristics. Team manager Marc Reef had repeatedly stated how his leader was accustomed to growing as the days passed and how the long Alpine climbs represented the ideal terrain to attempt a sensational comeback against the Slovenian champion.

The crash erased in a few seconds months of preparation and the dream of bringing the Tour de France back under the dominion of Visma-Lease a Bike. For Vingegaard, a long recovery process now begins. First there will be the collarbone operation, then the rehabilitation necessary to return to training and regain peak condition.

But the challenge will not be purely physical. In recent years the Danish rider has had to live with several accidents that have inevitably left a mark from a psychological perspective as well. The terrible crash at the 2024 Tour of the Basque Country had already seriously jeopardized his career, forcing him into a long break. Subsequently, there was also the accident at Paris-Nice the following season, another episode that had fueled deep reflections on his future.

Vingegaard himself had not hidden how much those experiences had marked him. On several occasions he had recounted how cycling is an extremely dangerous sport and had admitted to even considering retirement after experiencing firsthand the fragility that every rider faces every time they take to the race.

Vingegaard's withdrawal inevitably changes the face of the Tour de France. The long-awaited challenge with Tadej Pogacar, which in recent years has inflamed the cycling world, is interrupted once again before its natural conclusion.

The Danish rider leaves the race after fighting courageously in the first half of the Grande Boucle, trying to limit the damage against a Pogacar who appeared superior from the first mountain stages. The hope was to reverse the balance in the final week, exploiting the longest climbs and his extraordinary recovery ability.

That duel, however, will not happen and for Visma-Lease a Bike it is a very heavy loss, both on a technical and moral level. For the Tour de France it is the farewell to one of its main protagonists. For Jonas Vingegaard, instead, it is the beginning of another difficult climb, perhaps the most complicated: that of recovery, physical and mental, after an accident that abruptly interrupts his chase for the yellow jersey.