“I am producing the best performances I have ever produced. I simply cannot do more.”
Those are Jonas Vingegaard’s own words about Pogacar, spoken not on a race day but behind closed doors, and now made public by his Visma-Lease a Bike teammate Mattias Skjelmose on the Danish podcast Hva så?! with comedian Christian Fuhlendorff. The quotes were first surfaced by Domestique Cycling.
Skjelmose relayed the fuller version of the Dane’s confession: “What am I supposed to do when I am better than I have ever been and he still rides away from me? I cannot do more.”
The admission arrives less than three weeks after Vingegaard crashed out of the 2026 Tour de France. He hit the tarmac on a sweeping right-hand bend around 20 kilometres from the finish of stage 15, the summit finish at Plateau de Solaison, in the same fall that took down teammate Sepp Kuss and UAE’s Isaac del Toro. Both remounted. Vingegaard did not.
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He fractured his right collarbone and was flown home to Denmark, where Visma-Lease a Bike confirmed the surgery and abandonment. He had been sitting second on general classification, 4:30 down on Pogacar before the crash.
The one rider who has bent the Slovenian
Skjelmose framed the psychological weight in his own words on the podcast.
“I think there is enormous pressure on him. He is the only one who has really been able to compete with Pogacar and he is the one who has come closest.”
Vingegaard is the only rider on the circuit to have beaten Pogacar at the Tour, winning back-to-back in 2022 and 2023.
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The Slovenian took yellow home in 2020, 2021, 2024, 2025 and again this July, when his fifth title moved him level with Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain as joint-record holders. Remco Evenepoel finished second in Paris, almost six and a half minutes back.
For a rider who this season became the eighth man in history to complete the career Grand Tour set, with the Giro d’Italia in May added to a 2022 Tour and the 2025 Vuelta, the ceiling admission cuts hard.
Montreal Worlds the only live 2026 target
Vingegaard’s directeur sportif Marc Reef has been careful not to promise a return date. “It’s both possible that Vingegaard will get back on the bike this year, while it’s also possible that he won’t,” he told reporters as the Tour rolled into its final week.
The Vuelta a España, which starts in Monaco on 22 August, is inside the six-to-eight-week window that clavicle surgery usually rules out.
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The road world championships in Montreal on 27 September give him roughly two months of grace. Fellow Dane Mads Pedersen addressed him directly this week: “Jonas: your collarbone will be healed by the time we race the Worlds.”
Before Vingegaard turns a pedal in anger again, Pogacar will be on the start line in Monaco on 22 August, adding a Vuelta bid to the five Tours already in the cabinet.
