{"id":199721,"date":"2025-08-22T10:08:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T10:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=199721"},"modified":"2025-08-22T10:08:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T10:08:16","slug":"vingegaard-looks-to-break-his-grand-tour-slump-in-the-vuelta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/08\/22\/vingegaard-looks-to-break-his-grand-tour-slump-in-the-vuelta\/","title":{"rendered":"Vingegaard Looks to Break His Grand Tour Slump in the Vuelta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonas Vingegaard hasn\u2019t won a Grand Tour since his 2023 Tour de France victory, so he is coming into this year\u2019s Vuelta Ciclista a Espa\u00f1a hungry for success. Since 2023, he has been hampered by injuries and twice beaten soundly by Tadej Poga\u010dar in the Tour de France. He might have won the Vuelta that year, but popular sentiment moved Jumbo-Visma (now Visma\u2013Lease a Bike) to ask him and then-teammate Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d\u00a0to ignore their personal ambitions and let Sepp Kuss take the victory.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The big GC favourite<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Rogli\u010d is gone, and Kuss is back in his usual role as domestique, so that the 28-year-old Dane has the team leadership all to himself this year. More importantly, his performance in this year\u2019s Tour demonstrated that he is back to his best. Yes, he lost to Poga\u010dar, but the Slovenian was unable to break him on the climbs, as he did in 2024. Vingegaard rode a poor time trial in this year\u2019s Tour, which put him behind the eight-ball in the first week of the race. But that shouldn\u2019t happen in the Vuelta.<\/p>\n

He remains the second-best climber in the world, which means that the Vuelta course suits him very well. There are 11 categorised uphill finishes on the 3,151 km route, including some with double-digit gradients at the end of long, arduous ascents, with three stages proposing more than 4,000 m of elevation. The best climber will win this race, and that should be Vingegaard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here for the overall win, and with this team supporting me, that seems like a realistic goal,\u201d he said on the team\u2019s website<\/a>. \u201cThere are many stages where differences can be made, so it\u2019s important to be ready from the very start. I\u2019m ready and would prefer to start racing right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The climbing begins in the first week, with tough Category 1 summit finishes in stages 7 and 8. But \u2018lucky\u2019 stage 13 could be the decisive finish in the race. At 202 km, it is the longest stage of the Vuelta, offers 3,964 m of elevation, including two Category 1 climbs in the final 60 km, and ends with a Special Category (HC) ascent to the summit finish on the iconic Angliru (12.4 km @ 10.1%, with ramps of up to 23.5%!).<\/p>\n

The challengers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As I see it, there\u2019s only one rider in the Vuelta who could challenge Vingegaard, and that is Jo\u00e3o Almeida, the UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG team leader. Or is he? As UAE declared on its website, Almeida \u201cwill lead the team\u2019s general classification ambitions\u201d but \u201cwill be joined in a co-leadership role by Spain\u2019s Juan Ayuso, offering the team multiple strategic options across the three-week race.\u201d So Almeida is the leader and Ayuso is the co-leader?<\/p>\n

How does that work, linguistically speaking? According to Merriam-Webster<\/a>, the prefix co-<\/em> means \u201cwith :\u00a0<\/strong>together\u00a0:\u00a0<\/strong>joint\u00a0:\u00a0<\/strong>jointly,\u201d which would make Almeida also a co-leader. They have apparently learned nothing from the Giro d\u2019Italia comedy in which Ayuso was the team leader until Isaac del Toro rode into the race lead and the team failed to address the issue until late in the race. That procrastination and whatever internal disputes it provoked might have played a part in del Toro\u2019s defeat.<\/p>\n

\"Joao<\/a>
There\u2019s only one rider in the Vuelta who could challenge Vingegaard, and that is Jo\u00e3o Almeida, the UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG team leader. Or is he? \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this case, however, UAE is hedging its bets because of the fractured rib Almeida sustained on stage 7 of the Tour, which caused him to abandon the race two stages later. He may not be fully fit yet. If he\u2019s at his best, he will be a formidable opponent. He has nine victories this year, including GC wins in the Tour de Suisse, Tour de Romandie and Itzulia Basque Country. Ayuso has five wins, including the GC in Tirreno-Adriatico. He\u2019s an excellent climber, but not yet on the level of Vingegaard or Almeida. The two UAE riders have already raced the Vuelta twice together, in 2022 and 2023, with Ayuso\u2019s third in the earlier race, nearly 5 minutes behind the winner Remco Evenepoel, their only podium finish.<\/p>\n

The also-rans<\/strong><\/h2>\n

With Richard Carapaz (EF Education\u2013EasyPost) not entered in the race because of a recent illness, I don\u2019t see anyone challenging the above trio in the GC. Ben O’Connor (Jayco AlUla), Egan Bernal (INEOS Grenadiers) and Jai Hindley (Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe) could win a stage or two and\/or end up of the final podium. Bernal and Hindley have won Grand Tours, but the Colombian has not yet recaptured his pre-crash form that led him to wins in the Tour de France (2019) and Giro d\u2019Italia. O\u2019Connor finished second in last year\u2019s Vuelta, to Rogli\u010d, and is coming into this year\u2019s race with only one victory for the season, as he did last year. He then finished second in the World Championships, so he seems to save his best for the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Hindley, who won the Giro in 2022,<\/a> crashed out of this year\u2019s Giro, fracturing a vertebra, and has had only one race since, the Vuelta a Burgos, in which he finished 25th, so his form is questionable. But his 21-year-old teammate Giulio Pellizzari is an interesting rider. He finished sixth in this year\u2019s Giro and fourth in the Vuelta a Burgos, well ahead of Bernal and Hindley. He will be a fascinating watch throughout the race.<\/p>\n

And the \u0160koda Green Jersey?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

And then there is Q36.5\u2019s Tom Pidcock. This is the pro team\u2019s first time at the Vuelta, as it needs a wild card invite to participate in Grand Tours. Pidcock rode in this year\u2019s Giro and finished 16th. He is one of the best cyclists in this race, but he is not a climber, or hasn\u2019t been so far. \u201cThe course this year is very diverse but still typical of the Vuelta, with its many uphill finishes. There are plenty of stages with profiles that could suit a rider like me,\u201d he was quoted as saying on the team\u2019s website<\/a>. \u201cWe learned from the Giro and had more time for thorough preparation this time\u2026 I\u2019m curious to see what I can do in the general classification.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Pidcock, the stages that suit him do not include the big mountain stages, where he will probably lose substantial time to Vingegaard et al. But there are plenty of hilly and medium mountain stages where he should be competitive. He may even have a chance to win the \u0160koda Green Jersey since many of the race\u2019s flat stages have uphill finishes that do not favour sprinters. In addition, only two stages, the first and the last, have been classified as bunch sprints, which offer a maximum of 50 points to the winner. But Pidcock will have to contend with Lidl-Trek\u2019s Mads Pedersen, who is having a monster of a year, with 13 victories and four green jersey wins, including in the Giro, and with Filippo Gana (INEOS Grenadiers), who is always a threat to win something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonas Vingegaard hasn\u2019t won a Grand Tour since his 2023 Tour de France victory, so he is coming into this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":199722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[8642,4479,5450,6699,479,3487],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-199721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-2025-la-vuelta","tag-joao-almeida","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-juan-ayuso","tag-la-vuelta","tag-sepp-kuss","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"\nVingegaard Looks to Break His Grand Tour Slump in the Vuelta - \u0160koda We Love Cycling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jonas Vingegaard hasn\u2019t won a Grand Tour since his 2023 Tour de France victory, so he is coming into this year\u2019s Vuelta Ciclista a Espa\u00f1a hungry for\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/08\/22\/vingegaard-looks-to-break-his-grand-tour-slump-in-the-vuelta\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vingegaard Looks to Break His Grand Tour Slump in the Vuelta\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jonas Vingegaard hasn\u2019t won a Grand Tour since his 2023 Tour de France victory, so he is coming into this year\u2019s Vuelta Ciclista a Espa\u00f1a hungry for\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/08\/22\/vingegaard-looks-to-break-his-grand-tour-slump-in-the-vuelta\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"\u0160koda We Love Cycling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-08-22T10:08:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/2\/2025\/08\/Jonas-Vingegaard-profimedia-1030581599-CVR.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"990\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"660\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tereza\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Siegfried Mortkowitz\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/08\/22\/vingegaard-looks-to-break-his-grand-tour-slump-in-the-vuelta\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/08\/22\/vingegaard-looks-to-break-his-grand-tour-slump-in-the-vuelta\/\",\"name\":\"Vingegaard Looks to Break His Grand Tour Slump in the Vuelta - 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