Jonas Vingegaard turned heads when he rolled up to the start of stage 2 of the Tour de France in a face mask.<\/p>\n
Surely the Visma-Lease a Bike leader can\u2019t be sick already<\/em>?<\/p>\n Or is COVID floating about?<\/p>\n Not so.<\/p>\n Vingegaard explained Sunday morning that he\u2019s going full \u201csafety first\u201d after he relished a perfect start to this Tour de France.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s already some sickness in the bunch. As I\u2019ve been sick in my last two Tours de France. I want to be on the safe side and to try to stay healthy,\u201d Vingegaard told reporters at the stage 2 start line.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s more of a precaution on my side; I don\u2019t have anything at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Sickness has proven to be almost as big a nemesis to Vingegaard as Tadej Pogacar.<\/p>\n The Dane has fallen ill in almost all of his recent grand tours \u2013 including when he rode to title victory at the 2025 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a and at the recent Giro d\u2019Italia.<\/p>\n After shaking the demons of two years of defeat to Poga\u010dar in Saturday\u2019s stage 1 TTT, \u00a0Vingegard refused to take any chances amid thousands of fans Sunday morning in Tarragona.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot more people here, a lot more spectators and journalists, things that can go around,\u201d Vingegaard said Sunday. \u201cI just want to stay safer than in the last grand tours.\u201d<\/p>\n The grand tour peloton is like a Petri dish of assorted ailments.<\/p>\n Riders show up to the Tour de France razor-thin and on the brink of burnout.<\/p>\n G.I. complaints and chest infections float past their faces as they share air with rivals, fans, and the media.<\/p>\n Some form of mini-epidemic will inevitably crop up come week three of the Tour de France. This year, Vingegaard won\u2019t let himself be a victim of it.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/vingegaard-no-risks-tour-de-france\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2284738840.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated July 5, 2026 08:11AM Jonas Vingegaard turned heads when he rolled up to the start of stage 2 of the Tour de France in a face mask. Surely the Visma-Lease a Bike leader can\u2019t be sick already? Or is COVID floating about? Not so. Vingegaard explained Sunday morning that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2028238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2028238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2028238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2028238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2028238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}