Jonas Vingegaard: ‘Should I stab my own teammate in the back?’
Jonas Vingegaard has spoken about his plans regarding his American teammate, Sepp Kuss, at the Vuelta, saying he will support him all the way to Madrid.
In an interview with Danish broadcaster TV2, asked the Tour de France champion if he had seen some of the (many) comments that had been written about both him and his Slovenian teammate.
Explanation of what happened
“If you have to try to explain to the fans who are now complaining about this decision and think it’s a form of match-fixing because they thought you were going to win….what would you say to them?”
“Well, I really just want to ask them if they think I should stab my own teammate in the back? Because I don’t think I should,” Vingegaard responded.
Dramatic few days
During Stage 16, Jonas Vingegaard did in fact attack his own teammate in the red jersey, and made up over a minute on him, bringing him to just 29 seconds behind. He also jumped over teammate Primož Roglič. On Wednesday, Roglič and the Dane dropped Kuss, taking 19 seconds on him. That meant Vingegaard was only eight seconds behind int he overall. This all changed on Stage 18, however, after an apparently heated team meeting the night before.
Cycling is a team sport
“Do you think it’s because people don’t understand that cycling is a team sport?” asked.
Sean Kelly is absolutely not impressed with Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard
“Yes, it’s a team sport, and Sepp has helped me so many times, so why should I stab him in the back? That’s not who I am as a person. I don’t want to do that. Until yesterday, I was put in a somewhat difficult situation, where I perhaps felt that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he said.
The race for the red jersey
The journalist then asked Vingegaard to elaborate on that.
“We had agreed that we would race for the red jersey, and it is clear that if the other two duel over it, then I also want to be involved. But if we had agreed not to do what I wanted from the start,” he said. “I would have liked to have seen that after the rest day we had not fought for it more and had just ridden defensively. But we decided that we had to race for it, and in that way I was also put in a bit of a difficult situation, I think.”
Tactics changed, eventually
then asked if that decision was made perhaps too late?
“I would have liked to see that it had been made earlier. It would mean that Sepp still wins, hopefully,” Vingegaard concluded.