Jonas Vingegaard targets Grand Tour slam as Giro d’Italia begins in Bulgaria | Giro d’Italia
J.onas Vingegaard’s bid to finish a uncommon Grand Tour grand slam by profitable the 2026 Giro d’Italia begins in Bulgaria on Friday when the double Tour de France winner makes his debut in the Italian race.
Vingegaard, the winner of the 2022 and 2023 Tours de France, has been eclipsed by the achievements of Tadej Pogacar – winner this season of 9 races in 11 days of racing – however is the excellent favourite for victory in Rome on 31 May.
That is essentially as a result of Pogacar is absent. In truth, the Dane shall be competing in one thing of a void, as the world’s greatest riders skip the Giro to prioritize on the all-consuming Tour de France.
Success in his first Giro will make Vingegaard the eighth rider in historical past to win all three Grand Tours, however the absence of Pogacar, each from final 12 months’s Vuelta area and this spring’s Giro peloton, is more likely to overshadow the achievement.
Vingegaard will race in opposition to a area missing not solely the seemingly unstoppable Slovenian, but additionally Remco Evenepoel, the double Olympic champion, and the prodigious French teenager Paul Seixas, who has introduced that his precedence shall be starting his first Tour de France in Julyin which he would be the youngest debutant in 89 years.
Other notable absentees from the Giro embody Tom Pidcock, third to Vingegaard in the 2025 Vuelta a España, fast-developing German rider Florian Lipowitz, a podium finisher final July in Paris and Pogacar’s teammate Isaac del Toro.
For Vingegaard, as soon as seen as Pogacar’s closest rival, the Giro can also be an opportunity to reassert himself. At 29, he’s now in hazard of being usurped by Seixas, a rider 10 years youthful who has already proven himself able to following Pogacar’s vicious accelerations.
But there are indicators that the Dane, derailed by a life-threatening crash in 2024is again to his greatest. After winning the troubled 2025 Returnwhich was disrupted by serial pro-Palestine protestsI gained France’s second-biggest stage race, Paris-Niceand in addition the Volta a Catalunyathis spring.
Given the record of absentees from the Giro’s begin record, Vingegaard’s Visma Lease-a-Bike workforce may ask if not now, then when, however making any assumptions of the Giro underestimates the capricious nature and volatility of a race famend for freak accidents and excessive climate.
This is the primary Giro Grande Partenza to happen in Bulgaria, and the fifteenth overseas begin in 109 editions of the pink corsahowever the grand plan has been blighted by political unrest in the host nation and disputes over touring prices with the main groups.
After three days of racing in Bulgaria, the convoy will head to the foot of Italy after which flip north, by means of Calabria and Campania, earlier than the primary main mountain end at Blockhaus, on stage seven.
The 2026 Giro takes in virtually 49,000 meters of climbing and 5 summit finishes, which, given Vingegaard’s capabilities, seems ideally suited to his hopes of success. There is one particular person time trial, halfway by means of the race, however it’s flat and, regardless of being greater than 40km lengthy, you shouldn’t hassle him.
If the Dane shall be counting on his latest good type, Grand Tour expertise and climbing expertise, then Jim Ratcliffe’s lately rebooted Ineos workforce, which has relinquished sole naming rights to the Danish tech specialists Netcompany in return for a €20m (£17.2m) a 12 months enhance, shall be hoping to take advantage of AI in their pursuit of a first Grand Tour win since 2021.
For the new-look Netcompany Ineos, the Giro affords a chance to check two latest improvements – the combination of AI into their racing technique and Geraint Thomas’s appointment as director of racing.
But Thomas, talking on the Netcompany Ineos launch final week, believes there’s extra to racing than software program. “I think there’s still a need for the art,” he stated. “Getting that clarity on all the data and stuff is one thing, but bike racing isn’t just about numbers. It’s about how you ride, the craft, and consistency.”
Wealthier than they have been a month in the past, the Welshman and his workforce are additionally now in a place to pursue Seixas, who, whereas solely a young person, has grow to be essentially the most coveted expertise in the game.
While the hypothesis about Seixas’s future continues, Netcompany Ineos will depend on the consistency of Egan Bernal, winner of the 2021 Giro and in addition the Tour de France, at just 22, in 2019. Like Vingegaard, the Colombian’s greatest profession outcomes got here before a high-speed crash that left him in intensive care.
Bernal has not completed on the rostrum of a Grand Tour since making his comeback, and whereas he’s a reliable performer in the excessive mountains, he’s unlikely to problem for the pink jersey. This 12 months’s Giro is Vingegaard’s race to lose.
