Two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard claims he is down but not out, not entirely at least, as this year's race heads into its final week.
The 28-year-old Dane is a little over four minutes behind Tadej Pogačar as of the second rest day, but he made it clear in a Visma-Lease a Bike press conference on Monday in Montpellier that he has not given up hope.
"I do still think that I can win it," Vingegaard said. "It looks very hard, now it's a big gap, but I still think I can do it."
Theoretically, that's probably true. The stages to come are hard enough that even a gap of 4:13 might not be completely safe, with summit finishes on Mont Ventoux on stage 16, the Col de la Loze on stage 18, and a third hors categorie climb to La Plagne on stage 19 all likely to be major battlegrounds for the GC riders. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that a rider could lose four minutes on those high-altitude challenges, to say nothing of crashes or illness.
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