Jonas Vingegaard will begin the 2026 Tour de France without two of the riders who have so often helped shape Team Visma | Lease a Bike’s race around him.
Wout van Aert is not in the squad. Neither is Christophe Laporte.
For Vingegaard, that changes more than the team sheet. It removes one familiar internal dilemma, but it also leaves Visma without two of its most versatile riders as Tadej Pogacar waits again in July.
Clement revisits Visma debate
According to Kieran Wood in CyclingUpToDate, former professional Stef Clement has revisited last year’s debate around whether Visma could afford to chase stage ambitions while also trying to win yellow with Vingegaard.
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That debate was sharpened in 2025 when Trine Marie Hansen, Vingegaard’s wife, questioned whether the team should be focused more completely on her husband’s general classification campaign.
Her comments were widely interpreted as criticism of Van Aert’s own Tour ambitions, although the Belgian has also been one of Vingegaard’s most important helpers.
“Is it not so that if you go to the Tour de France with Van Aert, Laporte and an Affini, that you always want to play the Van Aert card a few times?” Clement asked on the NOS Wielerpodcast.
“Maybe Vingegaard was bothered by that.”
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No Van Aert card to play
This year, that dilemma has disappeared.
Van Aert’s absence means Visma will not have to divide resources around his stage-hunting opportunities. There is no green-jersey option, no sprint-stage plan built around him, and no need to decide when his ambitions should come before Vingegaard’s.
But the loss cuts both ways.
Van Aert has never been just another domestique. In past Tours, he has protected Vingegaard on flat days, controlled chaotic stages, chased moves, survived deep into the mountains and still carried a winning threat of his own.
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His role on Hautacam in 2022 remains one of the clearest examples of how decisive he can be when the race turns against Pogacar.
A new support structure
According to CyclingNews, Visma’s Tour squad will include Vingegaard, Sepp Kuss, Matteo Jorgenson, Edoardo Affini, Victor Campenaerts, Bruno Armirail, Per Strand Hagenes and Davide Piganzoli.
It is still a serious team, and one built clearly around Vingegaard.
But it is not the same multi-purpose Visma side that could once control almost every type of stage while still carrying Van Aert as a second weapon.
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Clement questioned whether that support will matter if Vingegaard cannot match Pogacar when the race reaches its decisive moments.
“Is it not just as simple as saying you are only as good as your leader?” Clement asked.
“You can put nine men alongside him… Or are we then too easily overlooking the riders who cannot take part?”
Pogacar remains the standard
Clement also pointed to the changing level of Pogacar, who enters the Tour as defending champion and a four-time winner.
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Vingegaard beat the Slovenian in both 2022 and 2023, but Clement argued that Pogacar’s disrupted preparation after his crash at Liège-Bastogne-Liège shaped the second of those defeats.
“Not to take anything away from Vingegaard, but he wins the Tour of 2023 because of a disrupted preparation after that crash of Pogacar in Liège,” Clement said.
He then returned to the central question facing Visma.
“But you are facing an increasingly strong Pogacar. Isn’t Jonas saying he needs all the help he can get to fight this Pogacar? Is he not wondering whether it is still possible to bet on two horses?”
The Alps may decide it
Vingegaard still arrives with major momentum.
He has already won Paris-Nice, the Volta a Catalunya and the Giro d’Italia this season, making him a far stronger challenger than the rider who tried to take on Pogacar last year after a difficult build-up.
Pogacar, however, has also reached July in dominant form.
Clement expects the final answer to come in the high mountains.
“We can look forward to a beautiful duel, because they have both not lost a big race this season,” he said.
“I am looking forward to that fight. It would be nice if Pogacar takes his fifth, but I think it will only be decided in the Alps.”
Vingegaard starts that fight without Van Aert, without Laporte and without the most obvious source of last year’s internal debate.
But he also starts it against the same opponent who made that debate feel so important in the first place.
