Jonas Vingegaard's coach has said the Danish rider lost a lot of muscle mass when he was in hospital after his crash and never recovered through the season, even though he was 2nd overall at the Tour de France.
Tim Heemskerk also said, even without the Itzulia Basque Country (2.UWT) crash in early April, it was uncertain if he would have beaten Tadej Pogačar to Tour de France victory as the Slovenian rider was now on a much high level than before.
Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) was already training hard in a bid to close the gap to Pogačar, especially after he had lost a lot of muscle mass when he was in hospital for two weeks after his crash.
By starting his hard winter training so early, while Pogačar was having a post-season break, Heemskerk said Vingegaard had an advantage.
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"It is a huge advantage that we can start early with Jonas", Heemskerk said in an interview with Velo. "We need that if we want to close the gap with Pogacar.
"By starting the training so early, we can create a very good foundation. And we really needed that. Because after that crash Jonas lacked a few things.
"Jonas was in the hospital for twelve days without any activity and that caused him to lose a lot of muscle mass. That had an impact on the rest of the year.
"A body needs time to recover, but Jonas went straight from the hospital to rehabilitation and to the Tour de France. That all cost a lot of energy and he never fully recovered from that. Jonas needs time to get his body back into the balance it was in before that fall.
"We can't sit back and say that Jonas would have beaten Pogačar without that fall. We have to accept that Pogačar has raised the bar even higher this year. We have to look at everything to beat him. We know that we have a big task ahead of us."
