Jocseen Fernández Matosín, team manager at UAE Team Emirates, said it was "right" for Tour de France double champion Jonas Vingegor (Visma-Lease A Bike) to take part in this year's race, adding that "we have a 10% chance of winning." But I'm sure I did the same thing.

Vingegaard's participation in the Tour de France was thrown into considerable doubt when he was seriously injured in a massive crash in the country of Itzulia Basque on 4 May. Since then he has not raced, but is fully focused on recovery. 

The definitive announcement was made on Thursday that both he and Wout van Aert will race on the tour. Giro d'Italia winner Tadeji Pogagnard (UAE Team Emirates) is the Tour de France double champion and Belgium's top rider as he fights to become the first rider to do a double and do both grand tours back-to-back since Marco Pantani in 1998. He will face a placer.

"It's just right," team manager Joxean Fernándezmatxin told cyclingnews. "He is a rider who has won the tour for the last 2 years and must be motivated to win the best race in the world again.

"There is no doubt that I would have done the same [and brought him] even if he had only a 10% chance of winning."

With the presence of Vingegaard, in addition to the already confirmed participation of Pogañar, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Primoš Roglić (Bora-Hansgrohe), the tour will be even more spectacular than before, Matxin agreed.

However, in terms of how this would change the race in terms of Pogañar and UAE strategy, Matxin said this would not change anything and reasoned that he had already considered Vingegaard's participation in the 12th month.

"We had already planned things with our eight riders for a tour back soon at that training camp in May and we already had the idea that Jonas Vingegaard would join, he had not crashed at that point. So we haven't changed our perspective at all," he said.

However, the fact that Vingegaard has not raced since after the 4-month injury could change the way Vingegaard races, at least in the early stages of the tour, Matxin observed to cyclingnews.

"It can cause some small doubts in his mind, maybe about how he is going." We had the same situation with Tadegi last year" - after his crash in Liege-Bastogne-Liege and a broken wrist injury - "It was obvious."You want to know how your levels are compared to rivals or how you are doing."

A new addition to the line-up of Visma-Lease A Bike Tour de France announced on Thursday is Van Aert, a successful tour racer who has won all sorts of different terrains and with Vingegaard's right-hand man Sepp Kuss and Roglië in the 2022 race mountain. Van Aalto was set up for the Giro d'Italia, but was injured in his own bad crash at the Dwarves Door Vlánderen, which led to a dramatic rethink of some of his plans for 2024.

"He's one of the best riders in the world, there's more to say about Van Aalto.Matxin commented. "The fact that he couldn't go to the Giro because of that crash means he had to change direction and head to the tour."But, as he added, Visma-Lease A Bike was destined to be an important player in the upcoming tour, both in terms of individual riders and collectively. "The whole team will be very important. They won in 2023 on 3 grand tours, but how important will they be on this year's tour?

As for his plans to win the Pogacal and Giro Tour double, Matosin argued that, from their own point of view, "we remain focused on what we do, rather than thinking about what our rivals can do." Of course, we need to be very mindful of who they are, but we need to work on what we can work on and that's our team. And Tadej is focused on his work, his training and doing things as much as possible to go on tour at 120%. "

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