Jonas Vingegaard’s latest attempt to escape the constant shadow of Tadej Pogacar and reboot his status as a Grand Tour winner kicks off this Saturday at the Vuelta a España.
The Dane’s two-year Grand Tour drought – his last success was in the 2023 Tour de France – has been marked by a near-fatal crash and some occasionally unseemly jostling for leadership within his Visma–Lease a Bike team .
Key to Vingegaard’s Vuelta ambitions is the absence of a world-weary Pogacar, last spotted on his bike wearing a jersey sporting the messages “Do Not Disturb” and “No Photography” while watching his partner, Urska Zigart, race to second overall in the recent Tour of Romandie Féminin.
In the aftermath of his fourth Tour de France win, Pogacar has spoken openly about the end of his career. “I’m already counting down to retirement,” the 26-year-old said. “I began winning early, so I know there can also be seasons with fewer results. But I will probably ride a few more Tours. It’s the biggest race and I doubt the team will leave me out.”
With the intense transfer speculation surrounding Remco Evenepoel having ended – the Olympic road and time trial champion will join Red Bull Bora-Hansgrohe next season – the Belgian is skipping the Vuelta in favour of next month’s Tour of Britain.
For Vingegaard, who needs to revive a career that is in danger of withering on the vine through a growing sense of inconsistency and underachievement, the Vuelta presents an ideal opportunity.
But even without Pogacar starting, the greatest threat to him is likely to come from the Slovenian’s UAE Emirates team, who have Juan Ayuso and João Almeida in their lineup.
The 22-year-old Ayuso has all the qualities to win a Grand Tour but has yet to deliver, while Almeida, who crashed out of the Tour, is another rider who excels in shorter stage races, but seems less sure of himself over three weeks.
Others, including the Briton Tom Pidcock, are seeing the Vuelta’s mix of steep, sharp climbs and technical sprints as a chance to further enhance their season. Pidcock began the year duelling with Pogacar at Strade Bianche and is among the pack of opportunists seeking both stage wins and a strong overall finish.
The 26-year-old, whose Q36.5 team did not qualify for the Tour de France but who finished 16th in this year’s Giro d’Italia, said that he is “curious to see what I can do in the general classification”. That marks a shift in mentality for the double Olympic gold medallist, who in the past admitted that he didn’t see himself as having the necessary mindset for such a goal.
Pidcock’s former team Ineos Grenadiers come to the Vuelta led by the 2019 yellow jersey winner Egan Bernal, and hoping to build on their two stage wins in July’s Tour, while also avoiding any more revelations centred on the under-investigation carer David Rozman.
If Bernal is to reach the podium in Madrid, he will need to race with a more strategic mindset than he did in May’s Giro, when an erratic performance took him to seventh overall, the team’s best result in a Grand Tour since Geraint Thomas finished third in the 2024 edition of the Italian race.
But, having missed out on snagging Evenepoel, the British team continue to lag behind the big three, Vingegaard’s Visma–Lease a Bike, Pogacar’s UAE Emirates and Evenepoel’s new sponsor, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.
Dave Brailsford has reportedly frozen all transfer activity and, even if the soon-to-be-retired Thomas imminently assumes a managerial role within the Grenadiers, the often-cited “period of transition” continues.
This being the Tour of Spain, the race begins, of course, in Italy, with an opening quartet of stages zigzagging from Turin to Novara and then across to France, before a long transfer to Figueres, where the convoy finally reaches Spain.
A team time trial, an individual time trial and six summit finishes, including the dreaded climbs of Angliru and the teetering Bola del Mundo, are allied to the usual smattering of tricky hilly stages and fast sprints.
As usual, the decisive moments will come in the steepest mountains, ostensibly Vingegaard’s forte. In the absence of the rider regularly touted as the “GOAT”, it will be down to the Dane to seize the day.
