MALAUCENE, France (Velo) — Matteo Jorgenson defended Visma-Lease a Bike’s full-throttle tactics at the Tour de France despite moving backward in the race for yellow against Tadej Pogačar.
Speaking to Velo on the Tour’s second rest day, Jorgenson shot back at armchair critics who’ve sniped at Visma’s aggressive tactic of making the race as hard as possible so Jonas Vingegaard could try to crack Pogačar.
“We were looking to see if we could find any weak spot in him,” Jorgenson said of Pogačar. “That’s all you can do when you know you have a strong team and you have a rider [Vingegaard] that’s close to the level of Pogačar.
“You’re obligated to try to beat him.”
Vingegaard started Tuesday’s decisive stage to Mont Ventoux in second at 4:13 back, and Visma vows to keep the pressure on all the way to Paris, despite what the peanut gallery might be saying.
‘Honoring the Tour and Jonas’
Jorgenson — who sat down with Velo ahead of the Tour’s final decisive week — swatted away a wave of online critics who suggested that Visma-Lease a Bike was doing too much.
“If we never try anything, then it’s not honoring the Tour de France or Jonas in any way,” Jorgenson said. “It’s easy to criticize now that you can see that [Pogačar] is way stronger, but for me, I don’t understand the criticism.”
Visma has come out swinging since the Tour began in Lille and pushed a hard pace in a series of lumpy stages across Normandy and Brittany.
The “Killer Bees” were hopeful Vingegaard could claw back some time in three decisive stages in the Pyrénées, but Pogačar counter-punched at the Hautacam and the Peyragudes time trial to all but sentence the Tour.
“What on earth were Visma thinking? It was just plain stupid” – Bjarne Riis “can’t fathom” Tour de France tactics & blasts “amateur” riding of Wout van Aert #Cycling https://t.co/feEU18wFAL
— CyclingUpToDate (@CyclingUpToDat3) July 11, 2025
Social media came alive with pundits and arm-chair sport directors suggesting that Visma should have forced UAE Emirates-XRG do the pacing, but Jorgenson defended the tactics.
“If people want to see a bike race where we sit in the wheels and wait till the last climb and then let him ride away, then it would be a really, really boring bike race,” Jorgenson said. “If you don’t try, then you never know.”
Jorgenson — who tumbled out of the top-10 in three brutal stages in the Pyrénées — said the team has zero regrets.
“We all believed that we could find a weak spot, like it’s happened in years past,” Jorgenson said of Pogačar.
“He was also looking much stronger in ‘23 and sometimes in ‘22, and they were still able to beat him,” Jorgenson said of his Visma teammates. “So for me, a lot of the criticism goes right over my head because I think people don’t understand what’s happening in the race.
Visma vows to keep swinging for the fences, with Vingegaard saying Monday he still believes he can win.
“We’ll for sure keep trying. There are two huge stages left in the Alps and anything can happen,” Jorgenson said. “The time gap is really big now, but you never know.”