Davide Piganzoli, 23, and 22-year-old Per Strand Hagenes will be making their Tour debuts, Lead Sports Director and soon-to-be Head of Racing Marc Reef said via a YouTube “Reveal” posted on Visma’s website this week. This will be the first Grand Tour Hagenes has ridden, while Piganzoli made his Grand Tour debut in 2023, when he tackled the Giro for the Pro-level Polti Kometa team.
He also rode the Giro in 2025 and again this year, his first with Visma, when he was Vingegaard’s primary mountain domestique as the Dane won five stages and the Giro GC. However, Piganzoli had not been expected to ride in the Tour until Wout van Aert was ruled out due to a serious elbow infection. The young Italian was as surprised as anyone when he was named to the squad.
“Marco [Reef] called me a few days ago,” he said. “My answer was like ‘What?’ It’s amazing!” Piganzoli will come into the Tour in fine form, after dominating last week’s three-stage La Route d’Occitanie, winning the mountainous final stage by nearly 2 minutes.
“We believe he’s ready to do the double and be an added value for the Tour de France,” Reef said, while also regretting van Aert’s absence. “Of course it’s a big blow that Wout cannot go [to the Tour]. And it’s also difficult to replace such a rider. In the last couple of years he has been making such a big difference on many occasions.”
Hagenes is the first rider from Visma’s development team to take part in the Tour. In addition to providing power in the flats, he will be aiding 30-year-old Edoardo Affini with the task of keeping Vingegaard safe and riding where he needs to be in the peloton. He has had a strong year, coming second in the E3 Saxo Classic behind Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin–Premier Tech) and winning the Antwerp Port Epic. He was also a member of the Visma squad that won the team time trial at the Tour Auverne–Rhône-Alpes.
Affini joined Visma in 2024 and will be riding in his second Tour for the team. He is its “pilot fish” and can ride lead-out in a bunch sprint or bring Vingegaard to safety in the chaotic final kilometers of a stage. “He’s a big guy with a lot of horsepower,” Reef noted.
The other members of Vingegaard’s Tour support team are veteran mountain domestique and Vuelta a España winner Sepp Kuss, the indefatigable all-terrain rider Victor Campenaerts, the 26-year-old two-time Paris-Nice winner Matteo Jorgenson and 32-year-old team newcomer Bruno Amirail.
Amirail is a three-time French time trial champion and will be expected to play a major role in the team time trial that kicks off the Tour on July 4 in Barcelona. Reef said that the stage 1 TTT was a crucial part of the team’s strategy. “It shows how strong you are as a team, not only the riders, but also the whole organization behind. We [have taken] this seriously for a long time; since 2019 we invested a lot of time and energy in this part of cycling. . . . It’s something where we can already make a difference as a team in the GC for Jonas.”
As for Jorgenson, he is not only an important part of the team’s mountains strategy, but also invaluable as a road leader, Reef said. “He is always in the race. He has the overview of what’s going on in the race . . . and because he has the overview, he can make decisions.”
But Piganzoli may be the team’s unexpected ace in the hole because of his strength as a climber. For Reef, the two most important parts of this year’s Tour de France are the beginning and the end, the stage 1 TTT (as already cited above) and the two big mountain stages that come before the race’s final day. “The hardest stages or where the biggest difference is going to be made is towards the end, for example, the two times [climbing] the Alpe d’Huez,” Reef said.
Actually, the second ascent of the Alpe d’Huez, on stage 20, isn’t what it sounds like. It comes right after not much of a descent from the brutal Col de Sarenne (12.9km @ 7.3%), and consists of an uncategorized climb of only 3.8km at only 6.1%. Chances are good that the stage and the race will have been decided before that final challenge, perhaps on the Sarenne or even the previous day, on the foot-to-summit climb of the Alpe (13.8km @ 8.1%).
With Piganzoli joining Kuss and Jorgenson, Vingegaard now has a deep climbing group capable of matching UAE Team Emirates–XRG on those steep alpine ascents, whether on the Alpe or the Sarenne. And the Dane is confident again after taking nearly two years to recover his best form after that brutal crash in the 2024 Itzulia Basque Country.
“It gave me confidence for the Tour de France, coming out of the Giro in a good way, [by] winning five stages,” he said on the reveal. “I have a lot of belief in myself, and that gives the other guys belief, belief in the plan we have, and belief that it’s possible to win the Tour de France again… I feel like I’m a stronger version of who I was back then,” when he last won the Tour, in 2023.
