Visma-Lease a Bike without a Plan B

The rest day of the 2026 Tour de France has a bitter taste for Visma-Lease a Bike . The seven remaining riders went out for their customary warm-down on Monday morning, but with heavy hearts: their undisputed leader, Jonas Vingegaard , left the Grande Boucle in the worst possible way, crashing less than twenty kilometers from the finish line of the fifteenth stage and suffering a broken collarbone.

A scene that left everyone speechless. The team had built the entire season around the Dane, without any alternative plans. As Matteo Jorgenson , one of the team's most valuable domestiques, admitted with brutal honesty: "We don't have a Plan B. We were all behind Jonas, we truly believed in him, and everything was going wonderfully."

The moment of tragedy came when the team was working perfectly, preparing the ground for Vingegaard ahead of the Plateau de Solaison. What promised to be a thrilling finale turned into a sporting tragedy in a matter of seconds. Further complicating the situation was the absence of Wout van Aert , forced to withdraw before the start due to an elbow injury: never before had Visma placed so much faith in one man.

For Vingegaard, this is his first career retirement from a three-week stage race. This makes the news even more shocking: in his nine previous Grand Tour appearances, the Dane had always finished at least second. The only exception was his debut at the 2020 Vuelta. This year, after completing the hat trick with victory at the Giro d'Italia, the circle seemed poised to close in glorious fashion. Instead, he suffered his first, painful defeat.

Yet Visma is no stranger to recovering after losing their captain. Sports director Marc Reef recalled similar episodes: in 2021, when Primož Roglič retired after a crash in the first week, it was Wout van Aert and Sepp Kuss who took home stage victories. The same thing happened at the 2022 Vuelta, with Robert Gesink coming close to victory. "We're still a strong team," Reef stated with determination. "In recent days, the guys have been finding their rhythm. On Monday, we'll sit down and look ahead."

But where to look, specifically? The first opportunity will be Tuesday's individual time trial , where Edoardo Affini , Bruno Armirail , and Matteo Jorgenson will try to challenge the favorite Remco Evenepoel . In the subsequent stages, with the freedom to chase breakaways without having to protect a leader in the general classification, interesting names emerge: Victor Campenaerts and Sepp Kuss , already winners of stages at the Tour, remain credible options, but rookies Per Strand Hagenes and Davide Piganzoli could also prove surprising: the former as a potential protagonist on the more undulating finales, the latter on the climbs.

Jorgenson summed up the team's pain and determination with deeply affecting words: "It's our whole life. We spend most of the year on top of a mountain training, weighing our food, doing everything. Fifteen stages in, we'd done a good job, we were in a good position. Accepting these things is always hard mental work."