The team won 52 races during the year, the most since 2023, when it registered 69 victories, including Vingegaard’s last Tour de France yellow jersey. Only Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates–XRG had more this year, with 78. Visma’s 21-year-old sprinter Matthew Brennan had an excellent year, also securing 12 wins, including five Vuelta stages, while Wout van Aert won the prestigious Paris-Roubaix and two stages plus the green jersey in the Vuelta.
Davide Piganzoli revealed himself to be both an excellent mountain support rider in the Giro and a multiple race winner, with victories in La Route d’Occitanie, the Škoda Tour de Luxembourg and the Giro dell’Emilia, the latter ahead of such top riders as Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5), Oscar Onley (Netcompany INEOS), and Ben Healey (EF Education–EasyPost).
Is Vingegaard’s future with Visma?
Could the 24-year-old Piganzoli replace the 29-year-old Vingegaard if the two-time Tour winner decides to retire or move on in the near future? That’s far from an idle question because Uno-X Mobility boss Thor Hushovd has said that his team is interested in signing Vingegaard and that he and the Dane have spoken.
“You talk to a lot of people in your circle. It’s a small community. So we have had some conversations,” he said. “What doesn’t appeal to me about signing Vingegaard is paying his salary. It’s quite high. But what might be possible is bringing in a Danish company that wants to establish a presence in Norway.”
He went on to say that “Vingegaard wouldn’t cost more than our entire budget. We have more than 50 riders, and he doesn’t earn that much. If something like that were to happen, the timing would have to be right.”
According to Domestique Cycling, Vingegaard earns a base annual salary of about €5 million, making him the third-highest earner behind Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe). His contract runs through 2028, but he has not signed a lifetime contract with the team, as van Aert has done. Obviously, I can’t speak for him, but I think Vingegaard would be very tempted by the possibility of riding on an all-Scandinavian team and helping develop its young riders.
And it would be “a dream” to sign him, Hushovd said.
Is Seixas’ future with Visma?
Visma is already making plans for Vingegaard’s retirement or departure and have expressed interest in signing Paul Seixas, Decathlon CMA CGA’s 20-year-old prodigy. Visma team manager Richard Plugge revealed he had a brief conversation with Seixas as early as last year’s Tour de l’Avenir. And WielerFlits reported that Visma has been talking with the Frenchman’s camp for close to a year, with the talks also involving Seixas’s representative.
“First of all, everyone wants to talk to Seixas, and everyone wants to have him,” Plugge said. “He is with Decathlon, and he still has a contract there. He has to respect his contract and we respect the rules, so we are not concretely working on anything. But if he decides to go to another team, then we think we are the best team to develop him to win Grand Tours.”
According to analysts, any team looking to sign Seixas would need to offer him a massive contract, anywhere from €8 million to €13 million annually – which would immediately make every other rider in the peloton more expensive and threaten the future of small-budget teams. It would also force Visma to shore up its stable of domestiques.
The team proved in the Giro that it was one of the best on the road, with Piganzoli looking very strong. But the tireless Victor Campenaerts is 35, as is the excellent Wilco Kelderman; Bruno Amirail was a beast in the second half of the year, but he is 32, as are Sepp Kuss and van Aert. Van Aert still rides like a superstar, but Kuss had a disappointing year.
Jørgen Nordhagen, 21 and Per Strand Hagenes, 23, look promising but green, but Visma has so far been practically absent from the transfer market. But Plugge and his team know what they’re doing and that’s why I think Visma would be a great fit for Seixas, especially if Vingegaard remained there and became his mentor.
“Of course, we have Jonas Vingegaard as the team’s main leader, but we also need to look to the future,”Plugge said. “For example, Jonas is currently busy coaching Davide Piganzoli.” If Piganzoli’s record this year is due largely to Vingegaard’s input, then I imagine that the Dane would be very good for Seixas as well.
Vingegaard at 30
Vingegaard turns 30 on December 10 and has to face the facts. No one at that age or older has won the Tour de France since Geraint Thomas in 2018. That’s primarily down to Pogačar and Vingegaard, who have won the past seven Tours. The Dane was marvellous in the Giro but seemed not to have recovered from that effort in the Tour, where he seemed not at his best.
More worrying is the fact that he has had three serious crashes in the last two years, after hardly falling off the bike previously (except for a broken leg he sustained in May 2017, in the Tour des Fjords). Ageing impacts peripheral vision and split-second reaction times, which is significant considering how much faster cycling is today than it was ten or even five years ago. And young riders are benefiting from new training methods and new technology, including AI.
This is why men’s cycling is gradually becoming a young man’s sport, especially at the Tour, which is faster than other races. Does that mean that Vingegaard at 30 will be over the hill? Not at all; his Giro proved otherwise. But I doubt that he will win the Tour again – or that any rider over 30 will win the Tour again, unless it’s Pogačar. But when Pogačar is 30, Seixas will be 21, the age the Slovenian was when he won his first Tour.
But will the young Frenchman’s team jersey be yellow then?