“For me it’s fifty-fifty whether Jonas makes it to the Tour”

Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert’s participation in the Tour de France remains in doubt, according to their coaches at Visma-Lease a Bike.

In separate interviews in recent days, both coaches deemed their prospects of lining up for the Grand Départ in Florence as being around “fifty-fifty,” while a spokesperson from Visma-Lease a Bike told Cyclingnews that no decision has yet been taken regarding the team’s Tour selection.

Vingegaard suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs and a broken collarbone in a mass crash at Itzulia Basque Country in April, and he spent twelve days in hospital in Vitoria after the incident. The two-time Tour winner returned to training in Denmark in May and was later spotted training in Mallorca.

Van Aert’s Classics campaign was cut short by the heavy crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen that left him with a fractured sternum, collarbone and ribs. The injuries ruled him out of a planned Giro d’Italia debut, and he returned to competition at last month’s Tour of Norway.

Both Vingegaard and Van Aert have been training in Tignes in the past week in the company of teammate Christophe Laporte. The remaining members of Visma-Lease a Bike’s Tour pre-selection will join them in the coming days, with Matteo Jorgenson touching down in the French ski resort yesterday as shown on his Instagram.

“For me, it’s fifty-fifty whether Jonas makes it to the Tour,” Vingegaard’s coach Tim Heemskerk told Danish newspaper BT.

Heemskerk had previously indicated that it would be essential for Vingegaard to train with his teammates in Tignes in order to have any chance of being ready for the Tour. The Dane is currently keeping pace with that schedule, but Heemskerk stressed that the next fortnight would be decisive.