Vingegaard Closes Pre-Giro Altitude Block — Visma-Lease A Bike Confirm Final Numbers Out Of Tignes, Dane Tells Copenhagen Press “I Go In With The Expectation Of Winning” Eleven Days From The Bulgaria Grande Partenza
Tuesday afternoon, Copenhagen. Eleven days out from the 9 May Grande Partenza in Nessebar, Jonas Vingegaard closed a 16-day altitude block in Tignes on Sunday, flew home to Denmark on Monday, and faced the Danish press in Copenhagen on Tuesday afternoon. The headline quote — “I go in with the expectations that I can fight for the victory, and the goal is to win the Giro” — reads as the most direct public statement of intent he has issued at any point in his career, a deliberate departure from the hedged, conditional language that has characterised every previous Grand Tour build-up he has fronted.
The numbers Visma-Lease a Bike released alongside the press conference are limited but pointed. Vingegaard accumulated more than 75 hours of riding time in the 16-day block at Tignes. The team has not published power figures, but the squad's coaches confirmed that Vingegaard hit personal-best 20-minute and 40-minute test numbers in the final week. The Dane will descend from altitude on a tapered programme designed to peak in the Giro's second week, when the route's most demanding mountain sequence is concentrated.
The shape of the favourites' table has changed considerably in the past two weeks. With João Almeida withdrawn through illness and Mikel Landa ruled out by a pelvic fracture, Vingegaard is now the 1/2 favourite at the major bookmakers, the shortest pre-Giro favourite since Eddy Merckx in 1973. Behind him, the market reads Giulio Pellizzari at 7/1, Richard Carapaz at 12/1, Jay Vine at 14/1 and UAE Team Emirates-XRG's second card at 16/1. The departures of Almeida and Landa have left Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and Visma without their two strongest external rivals on paper.
This is Vingegaard's Giro debut. The Tour de France winner of 2022 and 2023, third in 2024, second in 2025, has structured his career around July; that he is now riding May reflects both a tactical decision — the Grand Tour set is the long-term framing — and the team's read that the 2026 Giro route is unusually well-suited to him. “The organisers have traced an excellent route — perhaps not as hard as in recent years, which makes the Giro-Tour double possible for us,” he told the Copenhagen press conference. The remark is rare for its candour: most riders in his position would not openly assess the route's relative difficulty in front of a microphone.
The Visma eight is a deliberately Tour-flavoured selection. Wout van Aert takes the lead-out and late-stage card on transition stages, Matteo Jorgenson handles mountain support across the middle and high mountains, and Sepp Kuss is the high-mountain specialist for the third week. Edoardo Affini is the team's TT power on the opening Bulgaria flat run and the long stage-21 individual against the clock; Jan Tratnik, Per Strand Hagenes, Tobias Foss and Koen Bouwman complete the eight. It is a roster that reads as a Tour de France lineup transposed to May, which is precisely the framing Visma intend.
The race plan, as Visma have outlined it without being explicit, is conservative on the opening time trial — ride for time but not for risk — and aggressive on the stage 8 and stage 14 mountain finishes. The strategic logic is that the GC will be largely settled by stage 14, and that the third week becomes a defence-and-mark exercise in which Kuss is the central card. After the Giro, Vingegaard returns to Denmark for ten days before reconvening with the Tour de France team for a short pre-Tour block, with the Tour itself starting in early July.
The Copenhagen press conference is the cleanest statement of Visma's intent for the season. The Tour de France remains the institutional priority; the Giro is being raced to win, but it is being raced as the first half of a planned double rather than a standalone objective. “The goal is to win the Giro,” Vingegaard said. The clarity of the framing, in a build-up that has been characterised by the withdrawals of his two most credible rivals, is itself the news. The Grande Partenza in Nessebar follows on Saturday 9 May.