The mountains are here, and bing, bang, boom, the Tour de France just got tasty. To borrow Tadej Pogačar’s comments in the latest series of Netflix’s Unchained, Visma-Lease a Bike are here to “f*** things up.”
Beaten and wounded 12 months ago, the team of Jonas Vingegaard promised at the start of the race that they had devised a cunning plan to snatch yellow off Pogačar, the architects of that day on the Col du Granon in 2022 teasing that they’d been drawing more elaborate plans on a white canvas to isolate, expose and ultimately beat the world champion.
Sepp Kuss, the climbing chief Visma have relied on in the high mountains in the past six Tours, claimed that his team are “definitely more of the underdogs”, and pointed to the game plans that they’re drawing each and every night. “We have to be a bit more creative than just going as fast as we can up the last climb,” he said. “Every team has their different tactics: some stick more to the book, some not.”