Visma | Lease to Bike without certainty ahead of the Tour de France 2024. Having returned to training in recent days after his terrible crash at the Tour of the Basque Country, Jonas Vingegaard still has to assess his current condition and possible recovery timeline in order to decide whether to take part in the Grande Boucle, just as at the moment the presence of Wout Van Aert is still far from certain, who would still represent a valuable Plan B for a team that at that point would have in Sepp Kuss the man of reference for the general classification, but being able to hardly think about the final success, and the Belgian free hitter for the first time in his career at the transalpine GT.

“We are clearly facing two scenarios,” team manager Richard Plugge explains to Relevo, “One where Jonas goes to the Tour and one where he doesn’t. It all depends on his recovery. In the end, we cannot go to the Tour to defend the title if Jonas is not 100 percent. That is something we are not going to do.”

Better, however, is the condition of the Belgian, who in any case has a busy schedule already in the second half of the season, with the Paris Games as his big goal, and we will have to figure out his compatibility: “Wout has the advantage of being a little bit further along in his recovery, so physically we think he can be there, but again we have to wait. We haven’t sat down with him yet to talk about his schedule after the crash. We have to see if he sees himself in the Tour de France or not, and analyze all possible scenarios to decide.”

On the Dane at the moment, therefore, there is still great uncertainty. After 12 days in the hospital following the crash in which he suffered a fractured collarbone, several broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a contusion to the same lung, he has returned to cycling and has only been training for the past few days. Already a certain absentee from the high altitude retreat that the team will be doing soon, as well as uncertain of his presence at any preparation races for the Grande Boucle, his presence at the start in Florence appears rather weak. But then again, there were far worse scenarios….

“The first concern I had and we had as a team was to assess whether Jonas could be a person in his full capacity again,” the Dutch executive emphasizes, however, “It sounds harsh, but it is. After a crash like the one he suffered, we have to be cautious and proceed day by day with his recovery. Right now he is just back on the bike. We have to wait a few days to see where he is physically.”