‘They’re not confident!’ – Bradley Wiggins on Jonas Vingegaard’s GC hopes and a pivot from Jumbo

Dutch team Jumbo-Visma could be pivoting tactics at the 2021 Tour de France and targeting stages rather than the general classification according at least Bradley Wiggins and his sources.

Wiggins was speaking on a segment of Brad on a Bike, where he gives updates from the peloton on the vantage of a motorbike.

Speaking about a potential change in tactic from Jumbo-Visma, Wiggins said “I’m just here behind the breakaway. Just an interesting point I want to chat about.

“I had a chat with Belgian TV just before and the composition of this breakaway. We’ve got three Lotto Jumbo riders in there.

“Of course Wout van Aert, the winner on Mont Ventoux is here, Steven Kruijswijk and Sepp Kuss which leaves Jonas Vingegaard, they’ve only got five riders left in the race, on his own with one other team-mate.

“How that’s going to play out when we get to the last climb of the day in terms of them mounting some kind of challenge on Tadej Pogacar remains to be seen.

“But he did say the guy from Belgian TV that he’s going for the stage win today Van Aert, they’re chasing stage wins from this point out because they’re not that confident that Vingegaard can get onto the podium. And after what they came here for in terms of winning the GC that wasn’t successful for them. A lot of teams came here to try and win this race and that challenge has fallen apart for them because of the crashes that we had,

“Jumbo-Visma, three riders in this Breakaway and that looks like it will go to the finish. I can’t imagine them pulling anyone out of the break or anything like that to drop back because they’ve got such a strong set of riders here. They look like they’re going to be ssetting it up for Van Aert, that’ll be the plan for today.”

Interestingly around 30km later the subject of Jumbo came up on commentary and Rob Hatch spoke about a possible new arrival as well as expansion for the team’s sponsor.

“You never know what’s going on in the background.” Hatch said with TV footage focusing on Jumbo. “One rumour that’s flying around in the Netherlands at the moment is that Wout Poels could well be on his way to Jumbo-Visma

“We know that Orla [Chennaoui] our presenter lives in the Netherlands and she was actually saying earlier on today that the main sponsor of Jumbo-Visma, Jumbo, are expanding their business well into Belgium.

“As well as the sporting perspective it’s so important from a business perspective to keep Wout van Aert on the team. A Belgian presence as the Dutch supermarket extends its way into Dutch-speaking Belgium.”

Sean Kelly, who was joining him on comms, agreed. He added: “Of course a sponsor that is going to do business in a country where that rider is from and if he is a high-profile rider, and in the case of Wout van Aert in Belgium of course he is huge. Not surprising that JV want to keep hold of him.

“There was talk in the earlier part of the year about how he was negotiating a contract. I wasn’t at all surprised when I heard they were branching out into Belgium and they wanted to keep Wout van Aert.

"Even without that they would make all the effort to keep hold of him because he is such a talent. He is an all year rounder and for a sponsor to have a rider like that is a huge thing.”

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