Visma admits “positive encouragement phrase” no longer working
Vingegaard to get new motivational strategy as Tour de France returns to mountains
When you are formulating a strategy to somehow beat four-time Tour winner Tadej Pogacar, you’re forced to re-examine everything.
That means training plans, sleep protocols, altitude camps, team roster composition, high-level strategy — basically every detail in existence. That’s what it takes to dethrone the greatest cyclist of all time.
That deep dive has resulted in a critical review of Visma’s “encouragement” script that is delivered from the team car during the stages of Le Tour.
Anyone who has watched the Tour in recent years or viewed the Netflix series Unchained knows the script: “Come on Jonas, come on, come on, come on.”
Powerful words that helped Vingegaard win two editions of the Tour de France. However, as Tadej Pogǎcar’s star has continued to ascend, Visma is taking a critical look at those words of encouragement.
“It is clear this phrase has become stale, has lost some of its motivational force,” said director sportive Marc Beach. “You can only repeat certain sequences of words for so long before they lose their juice. We have come to the conclusion that ‘Come on, come on, come on’ is no longer strong enough to counteract Pogacar.”
Visma has been working overtime with a team of motivational coaches, energy manifesters, and psychologists to create a new series of “motivational activators.”
On the drawing board are phrases like “Faster, goddamn it, faster, win this goddamn race,” and the more evocative “Smash Pogacar like a bug, grind him into the road.”
Those are just early prototypes the team is continuing to iterate on. It appears all options and creative solutions are on the table. The Visma team management held a late-night meeting on the first rest day to push towards selecting finalists.
“The first round of development was good, solid, in the strike zone, but we need to push harder,” said team boss Richard Chugg. According to several sources, the squad spared no expense, flying in several hip-hop and hardcore rappers to supercharge the new “encouragement” phrases.
“They came up with some strong stuff. Things that made us and the sponsors a little nervous. It was edgy stuff, perhaps over the line, violent, and confrontational,” said Marc Beach. “But we’re in a difficult spot with Jonas behind by over three minutes. We have to take risks — perhaps there are some motivational issues.”
In fact, the squad has apparently focused-grouped several of the more edgy phrases and did a disaster check with Vingegaard to see if he is comfortable with them.
It was not an easy conversation. “On the bike, Jonas is not a shy, restrained personality. He’s a killer, but being Danish, he’s not happy with some of the bolder affirmations,” said Beach. “For example, we loved the rap vibe of ‘Whup his whack ass, whup him’ but he was uncomfortable with that. The same goes for ‘Put a cap in Pogǎcar’s head,’ which we liked for its kinetic energy, but again, Jonas said, ‘No, no, no, freaking way.’ He’s a classy guy.”
For now, the new front-runner “motivational mantra” is the more conservative “Just please ride a little faster, Jonas.” “It’s baby steps with Jonas; this is new territory for him,” said Beach. “But I can tell you, if he’s still losing time in week three, we’re going to verbally escalate.” “
“We are prepared to break new verbal ground, new levels of manifestation. I cannot promise we will not use “Punch him in the face and light his bike on fire,” said Richard Chugg. “We’d prefer not to, but it’s the Tour de France. We have to go to the maximum.”
We’ll see how the new “encouragement” strategy plays out on stage 14 with three Category 1 mountain climbs. Vingegaard is going to need every bit of motivation.