Jonas Vingegaard will line up for his first crack at the UEC Road European Championships on Sunday in a rare appearance with the Danish national team.
The two-time Tour de France winner and recent champion of the Vuelta a España hardly ever competes in one-day races, unlike his top rivals for Sunday's elite men's road race, Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel.
Why he's chosen to toe the line for the European Championships for the first time, he explained during the pre-race press conference, "Because it's a good opportunity to ride a one-day race again."
Vingegaard explained that he rarely competes in the Spring Classics because he is usually focused on his preparation for the Tour de France, but expressed a desire to explore his options.
"If I find the recipe for tackling one-day races at this European Championship, I'd love to compete in more in the future."
Vingegaard raced the Ardennes Classics in 2021 before finishing second overall in his first Tour de France, and did four one-day races after the Tour that year. But since proving his Grand Tour potential, he has steadily removed one-day races from his calendar.
In 2022, he won the Drôme Classic - coincidentally raced in the same area as the European Championships - but then dropped out of Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège before going on to win his first Tour de France. He closed his 2022 season out at Il Lombardia with an unremarkable 16th place.
Since then, a DNF at the 2024 San Sebastian Classic was his only one-day race appearance.
Unlike Vingegaard, Pogačar has become one of the top Classics riders in the world in addition to winning his fourth Tour de France this year. He repeated as world champion in Rwanda last week and won four Classics in the spring.
Evenepoel also balances Grand Tours with one-day races, winning De Brabantse Pijl in his first race of 2025. He has won Liège-Bastogne-Liège twice and San Sebastian three times in addition to his three time trial world titles and his 2022 victory in the World Championships road race.
Both Evenepoel and Pogačar headed to Ardèche from Kigali, where Vingegaard said, "they both seemed in really good shape".
The 203-kilometre route from Privas to Guilherand-Granges is peppered with climbs, with three ascents of the 7km-long Côte de Saint-Romain-de-Lerps, where Demi Vollering launched her winning move in Saturday's women's race, and four trips over the Côte de Val d'Enfer in the closing circuits.
It's a course tailor-made for climbers like Vingegaard, Pogačar and Evenepoel, but the Dane isn't sure if he will be among them fighting for the European title.
"Whether there's a three-way battle doesn't depend on them, but on me," Vingegaard said. "Because I don't really know how my fitness is. I've ridden two Grand Tours. We'll see what that brings."
He joked that he had already beaten Pogačar in a sprint, referring to his victory on stage 11 of the 2024 Tour de France in Le Lioran.
"Evenepoel? As far as I know, I've never sprinted against him."
