Crisis Averted: Affini Cleared to Start the Tour de France After Nationals Crash Scare
Visma-Lease a Bike can breathe again. Just 48 hours before the peloton rolls down the ramp in Barcelona, the team has confirmed that Edoardo Affini has been given the all-clear to start the 2026 Tour de France, ending a nervous wait that threatened to strip Jonas Vingegaard of one of his most valuable engines before the race had even begun.
The scare came at the Italian National Championships, where Affini crashed heavily around six kilometres into the elite men's time trial. The 30-year-old, a former national and European time trial champion, went down at speed and was taken away by ambulance, conscious but visibly shaken. With the Grand Départ barely a week away, footage of the impact left Visma fans fearing the worst.
Hospital examinations returned the first piece of good news: no fractures. The team initially stopped short of guaranteeing his participation, saying only that his recovery would be "monitored" over the following days. That caution was understandable — a crash violent enough to require an ambulance so close to a Grand Tour can easily leave a rider carrying deep bruising, road rash and lingering concussion symptoms into the opening week.
On Tuesday morning the picture brightened considerably. Visma confirmed that Affini had been "given the green light to travel to Barcelona and will start the 2026 Tour de France as planned." For a team that has already absorbed heavy blows to its support structure, it was the update they desperately needed.
Affini's value to this Visma project is difficult to overstate. He is a cornerstone of the squad in Saturday's Barcelona team time trial, where every second matters for the general classification, and he remains a powerful presence on the flat throughout the three weeks — the kind of rider who can hold a nervous bunch together on windy stages and drag Vingegaard back into position after a split. Losing him on the eve of a team time trial opener would have been a genuine tactical headache.
His clearance is especially significant given how much support Vingegaard has already lost heading into this Tour. The Dane arrives as reigning Giro d'Italia champion and Tadej Pogačar's chief rival, yet he does so without the seasoned classics muscle of Christophe Laporte and Wout van Aert, the latter withdrawn earlier in June after an elbow wound infection failed to heal. Against that backdrop, keeping Affini in the line-up matters far beyond a single stage.
With the roster now intact, Visma can turn its full attention to Montjuïc and the tactical puzzle of the team time trial. For Vingegaard, chasing the Giro-Tour double against Tadej Pogačar and a stacked field of challengers, the message from the team hotel is a simple one: the band is, at last, all here.