‘I really believed I was going to die’ – Jonas Vingegaard make death confession in caps crash comeback with dramatic Tour de France stage win

Dane strikes weighty psychological blow by catching and beating Tadej Pogačar on breathless day in Massif Central

Jonas Vingegaard was already back aboard his bike and conducting his warm-down during his flash interview at Le Lioran, but he couldn’t pretend that this had been just another day among many at the sharp end of the Tour de France. This was a moment apart.

The Dane has won this race twice, but surely nothing he has experienced at the Tour to date – and he has experienced much, from a home Grand Départ to his first yellow jersey atop the Col du Granon – could have inspired a riot of emotions quite like this one.

Dropped by Tadej Pogačar on the climb of Puy Mary with 31km to go, Vingegaard somehow made up a 35-second deficit on the following Col de Pertus before outsprinting the maillot jaune at Le Lioran, but the drama of the day’s action was only a detail in the bigger picture. Barely three months ago, Vingegaard lay in a hospital bed in Vitoria, fearing for his career and, he said, even his life.

Tour speaker Sebastien Piquet has a penchant for making stage winners cry, like ASO’s very own Barbara Walters, but he didn’t have to probe very hard here. Vingegaard only made it about halfway through his first answer before tears started to trickle down his gaunt face.

“It’s, of course, very, very emotional for me. Coming back from the crash… Sorry,” Vingegaard said before pausing to catch himself. “It means a lot. All the things I went through in the last three months… Yeah, it makes you think of that. I would never have been able to do this without my family.”

On April 4, Vingegaard suffered a punctured lung and a broken collarbone in the mass crash on the Alto de Olaeta on stage 4 of Itzulia Basque Country. Fellow Tour contenders Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglič were also among the fallers, but Vingegaard was the worst affected.

He spent twelve days in hospital in Vitoria, with Visma-Lease a Bike providing notably few concrete details about his condition. The concern heightened when Vingegaard’s father told Danish media that he, too, was utterly in the dark about the situation amid Visma’s information vacuum.