The Haters Guide to Being Broken
Disclaimer time.
Yes, this is ‘the Haters Guide’. No, I don’t hate Jonas Vingegaard. Yes, I do have an immense dislike of Radobank/Jumbo/Visma/Lease-a-Bike as an organization, and yes, I absolutely do hate that awful excuse for a human being, Richard Plugge.
Now that we have that out of the way…
It's hard to admit that you have been broken by something or someone, it can take you a while to notice. The realization is a culmination of events over a year, eighteen months, two years or longer. I say this as someone who has been broken more than once. Jonas Vingegaard is broken.
But who or what broke him? It would be easy to say his rivalry with Tadej Pogacar broke him, but that only tells part of the story.
Looking back over the last two to three years, it’s clear that his team broke him.
There appears to be a lot of bad blood (no pun intended) between the team formerly known as Radobank and whatever 'UAE' is calling itself this year, and most of it seems to go in one direction. The repugnant Richard Plugge can barely go a media cycle without feeling the need to mention 'certain other teams', many of his staff and riders are also unable to let themselves be defined by anything other than this rivalry. Maybe the UAE powers-that-be do the same, but a large percentage of cycling media is concentrated around - and focused on - the teams of northern Europe. Being the leader of the biggest Dutch team with one of the biggest budgets in the sport leads to scrutiny, and there's not really a place to escape from it; that scrutiny and pressure can cause fault lines if you're not prepared for it.
The beginning of the breaking of Jonas Vingegaard can be traced back to stage 16 of the 2022 Vuelta Espana. Primoz Roglic was on the verge of bloodying the nose of race leader Remco Evenepoel and pulling back some lost time in their epic GC battle. With Remco Standing roadside, a puncture having taken him out of the stage (just) within the 3km limit, Roglic was in a group at the front, looking to take time bonuses that would cut into Remco’s lead. In the last 150m, Roglic was defeated by gravity and crashed hard into the baking-hot Spanish asphalt. It was an unfortunate accident; it was a race over for Roglic, and Remco was all but assured GC victory. At this point, I really liked Roglic, Jonas, Wout (don’t mention Woke!) and many other Jumbo riders. I didn't have an opinion on Jumbo as a team because I don't watch cycling for teams; I watch it because I like bike racers. Jumbo was full of bike racers. I'd massively enjoyed that year's Tour and the epic battle between Jonas and Pogacar and what transpired on the Col du Granon.
Then Jumbo initiated one of the ugliest smear campaigns I’ve seen in any sport.
Along with Roglic, they went on a multi-day media blitz, throwing their full weight behind the idea that Bahrain's Fred Wright was to blame for yet another Roglic disaster-class in poor bike handling skills. The onslaught was brutal and seemingly never-ending. The way they attacked Wright was like an old-school political hit piece by establishment media. That was the first time I saw Jumbo in a different light, and I immediately lost any respect I had for Roglic.
Throughout 2023 and 2024, there were non-stop stories (bragging?) about how advanced Jumbo was in their training methods, there was constant talk in cycling media about their budget compared to other teams, and there was an almost never-ending taxi of flights to and from Teide. A second Tour victory followed for Vingegaard on the back of a Giro win for Roglic and a (non-monument) domination of the spring classics season. The culmination of the 2023 season saw Sepp Kuss claim the Vuelta GC. A truly remarkable - almost unbelievable - season. There was no humility from the team bosses. Instead, there was gloating galore from Plugge and the insufferable Grischa Niermann with their continual referencing of some 'perfect plan' and even bragging that they expected more competition at the Vuelta.
A little bit of a closer look tells another story. Roglic (who rode on with COVID, risking the infection of his competitors) won a Giro that saw Remco leave with COVID while in pink, with other GC contenders (TGH, Mas and Carapaz) crashing out. Pogacar missed 6 weeks of Tour prep with a broken wrist suffered at L-B-L, and while passing around victories to teammates during classics season, they failed spectacularly in the biggest one-day races; Van der Poel won MSR and P-R, Pogacar won Flanders and Remco won L-B-L.
If the Roglic crash was the forming of pressure point one in the breaking of Jonas Vingegaard, the 2023 Vuelta was pressure point two. The team clearly entered the race without a real plan other than to win it. They sent their two biggest names in Roglic and Vingegaard, then wound up with Kuss in the lead. Kuss leading was a very nice story, but it should have ended there. They continued on for another few stages before management finally had to give team orders that allowed Kuss to win the GC. They ordered the 2-time defending Tour de France champion to sit up and let a domestique take the win.
No, for real, they did that to him. then they were all sent out and told to pretend they were happy for each other.
Your Palmares is your legacy in cycling, and in the midst of a now years-long battle with Tadej Pogacar and UAE, they ordered the best rider in the world to sacrifice his Palmares for a nice story. In the ultra-competitive world of pro-cycling, that's like cutting someone's legs off. That's an insult to Vingegaard and an insult to the rest of the peloton. A GC title in a grand tour isn't something that's handed out, it's something that is earned. They cut Jonas' legs off when they told him to not race Kuss.
Pressure point three was the crash at Itzulia in 2024.
I like Jonas, he seems like a super nice guy, and I imagine he would be the same guy if he were still working at the local fish market. His young family is clearly very important to him and a crash like that would spook anyone. While a fully fit and flying Pogacar was racking up more monument wins and was basking in the glory of a Giro GC win, Jonas was entering the 2024 Tour in a similar position to Pogacar in 2023 - a race prep hampered by injury and with the pressure of sponsors to make the race and perform at his usual level. And just like 2023 Pogacar, he couldn't keep up with the yellow jersey across 3 weeks of racing.
Pressure point four comes if we fast forward to the end of the 2024 season, and a much-derided Escape Collective article about the use of Carbon Monoxide in training. It had the internet awash with memes and jokes about huffing exhaust fumes and smoking cigarettes and inspired very little by way of actual investigative content. As the offseason progressed into the preseason, a story most had forgotten was essentially confirmed as being true by none other than Jonas Vingegaard. It wasn't a 'yeah, I've heard the rumors, but we don't do that' denial, more an admission draped in an accusation, 'we do it legally, but I hear a certain other team does it illegally'. This was when I really started to think Jonas and his team might be a bit 'cooked'. As the winter months continued, everyone's favorite Islamophobe popped his head up and gave more interviews about his job with One Cycling and Saudi Arabia, going back to the 'certain other teams' schtick when defending Saudi involvement (he means UAE). I hate to use the term, but clearly, at this point, UAE and Pogacar were living rent-free in the heads of Pluuge, Neirmann et al.
As the season began, everyone in cycling media was desperate for the confirmation of Pogacar's calendar; would he ride all three grand tours? Is he going to Rwanda to defend his rainbow bands? Will he ride Paris- Roubaix? Can he win Milan-San Remo? To their credit, Pogacar and UAE seem to brush these questions off with non-committal media-speak and Pogacar's own online trolling. Similar questions were being asked of Jonas. The one that seemed to create a pressure point was concerning vaccines, representing his country and riding in Rwanda. The world’s discussion seemed to force a weird, awkward non-answer about schedules and vaccine effects. The team response to race scheduling appeared a bit flustered and, to an extent, determined by what Pogacar does.
This brings us back to the present and the result of all the 'pressure points' from the last two and a half years. When the weather was unforgiving and the road conditions dicey, instead of saying, 'It was a tough day, conditions weren't ideal, but we regroup and go again tomorrow,' Jonas announced that pro-cycling is too dangerous, and he wouldn't want his kids doing it.
Huh?
That's a very big admission from someone who is supposed to be this laser-focused bike-riding machine who hopes to reclaim his place as the best in the world. Where is his head at right now? How can you harness the drive and passion to be the best when your brain is taking you there?
A few days later, after cracking on a climb and saying the race was too dangerous, he has a crash - not a serious one, but a crash nonetheless - that leads to a bloodied lip and a bruised hand. The commentary surrounding him - both from the cycling media and his own team - made it sound like he'd fucking died! For real, I thought Rob Hatch was going to read him his last rites live on air. It was ridiculous.
Watching all of this unfold over the last few days, it reminded me of watching Ulrich v Armstrong every summer (okay, shitty example given what we know now about the pair of them, but it does fit the narrative). It didn't matter what Jan did; you just knew he would fold, and Armstrong would consume him. I've seen it a million times in other sports, too. Thinking about it over the last couple of days inspired me to write this - as much for my own comprehension of the situation as anything - and the conclusion I've come to is this.
Jonas Vingegaard is broken.
He rides for team run by arseholes who have no shame when it comes to throwing others under the bus. They will make excuse after excuse before accepting any fault themselves. Said team is the biggest name in a country where cycling is a religion and the pressure to deliver is exacerbated by the size of their budget. He was told he couldn't race for a second Grand Tour in a season by his team, an achievement that would have put him in the same category as the true greats, then he had to watch his greatest rival cannibalize the peloton 18 months later as he started his own double Grand Tour bid. He had to face his own mortality - figuratively as a cyclist and literally as a husband and father - after a terrible crash that clearly took a lot out of him both physically and emotionally. As his greatest rival was having one of the all-time great seasons, he and his team instead dragged the discourse into the mud with talk of cheating and 'sports washing' (what an annoying term). He's been questioned about vaccines and a lack of participation at the World Championships while his biggest rival carries the rainbow bands. He's now talking about the safety of his kids and the safety of races as much as he talks about the actual racing. Finally, today, he dropped out of one of the biggest races of the year because he has a sore hand and the weather sucks.
He's broken, and I don't think there's any fixing him. You can go home for as long as you like and condition yourself at altitude as many times as you want to, but mentally, I don't think it's there anymore. I'm not saying he'll disappear into the grupetto ala Froome or anything like that, but I do think Pogacar and van der Poel now stand together at the top of the sport. Last year I would have said it was Pogacar, Jonas and MVDP at the top of the sport, then Remco and Roglic a good distance behind the pair of them. Today, Pogacar and MVDP stand atop the mountain with Jonas now closer to Remco and Roglic than he is to the summit. Given Remco's exploits at the Olympics, Worlds and L-B-L record, there may even be an argument he is on the verge of surpassing Jonas.
I take no pleasure in saying any of this about Jonas. As fans, we need him; he makes things interesting and might be the only thing stopping Pogacar from winning every Grand Tour he chooses to enter.
I hope I’m wrong.