Only victory will do for Vingegaard at Vuelta a España - Preview

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Vuelta a España’s calendar shift from Spring to Autumn, and those three decades are perhaps best encapsulated by Movistar manager Eusebio Unzué’s maxim: “The Vuelta in September is a chance for riders to re-sit the exams they failed in July.”

Over the years, men like Alex Zülle, Abraham Olano, Roberto Heras, Alberto Contador and Primož Roglič have made up for July disappointments with glory in the low sun of a Spanish September.

Jonas Vingegaard didn’t exactly fail at this year’s Tour – let’s face it, beating Tadej Pogačar these days isn’t so much an exam as an insoluble riddle – but the Dane knows the Vuelta offers him a clear chance to claim something substantial from a season blighted by an injury lay-off and a seemingly unbeatable Slovenian.

This year’s Tour underscored the current stage racing hierarchy. Pogačar is out on his own, but Vingegaard is, by a considerable distance, the best of the rest. With Pogačar absent from the Vuelta a España, Vingegaard is thus the overwhelming favourite to claim overall victory. QED.

Anything other than a red jersey in Madrid will see this Vuelta marked as a failure for Vingegaard, but he is unlikely to be in any way burdened by those stakes. His track record speaks for itself. Since his emergence as a Grand Tour contender in 2021, he has never finished lower than second in a three-week race.

That sequence comprises five Tours – including two victories – and one Vuelta. The Tour defeats came at the hands of an otherworldly Pogačar, while the Vuelta was mitigated by the fact that Vingegaard was hemmed in by team tactics and diplomacy. He was likely the strongest man in the race, but his teammate Sepp Kuss was in the red jersey. After much internal handwringing, the team eventually rowed in behind Kuss.

That situation seems unlikely to repeat itself on this Vuelta, even if Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson are part of a strong Visma | Lease a Bike cohort. No, the team will row in squarely behind Vingegaard, and the biggest threat to his hegemony should be an external one – namely, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG duo of João Almeida and Juan Ayuso.

This element also ups the ante for Vingegaard. Like Vinegaard and Pogačar themselves, Visma and UAE have been locked in a duel for supremacy over the past five years, and the tensions between the outfits were evident on this year’s Tour. Visma already won the Giro d’Italia through Simon Yates, denying UAE’s Isaac del Toro at the last, and the Dutch squad would love to get another one over on Mauro Gianetti’s team here.

But for Vingegaard personally, there is another subtext to this Vuelta. If he is unable to beat Pogačar’s deputy Almeida here, it will surely plant more than a seed of doubt about his ability to close the gap to the Slovenian ahead of the 2026 Tour.

In some respects, then, this Vuelta isn’t simply a do-over for Vingegaard after missing out on the 2025 Tour – it’s also his first step towards next year’s Grande Boucle.

Amid all the plaudits for Pogačar’s historical run of success, Vingegaard’s own remarkable winning rate can often be overlooked. True, Vingegaard doesn’t race as often as his rival, nor does he ride as varied a calendar. But, like Pogačar, Vingegaard is something close to unbeatable when he lines up in a stage race.

In the past three seasons, Vingegaard has lined up in fifteen stage races. He crashed out of two, but he won nine of the remaining thirteen. The only defeats were second places to Pogačar – the last two Tours and the 2023 Paris-Nice – and to his teammate Kuss on the 2023 Vuelta.

Vingegaard’s level of consistency also extends to the races themselves. The most striking thing about Vingegaard’s 2025 Tour was that, for perhaps the first time, he suffered a pair of clear off days, in the Caen time trial and again at Hautacam.

His spirited displays in the final week, however, suggested that normal service had been resumed. Although Vingegaard only gained two bonus seconds on Pogačar across the entire Tour, he was still several rungs ahead of the rest. While a weary Pogačar was busy making it clear to UAE management that the Vuelta was emphatically not part of his plans, Vingegaard reached Paris already with his mind cast towards Spain.

“Last year I was completely dead after the Tour and now it’s a lot better,” said Vingegaard, who seemed energised rather than daunted by the four-week turnaround. “First I will take an easy week, but I’m looking forward to it.”

A “completely dead” Vingegaard still won the Tour de Pologne last summer before knocking his season on the head. This time out, after a Spring interrupted by crashes, he approaches the Vuelta – and, it seems, the Rwanda Worlds – with the air of a man eager to take a tangible prize from his season. It would be foolish to bet against him.

Vingegaard doesn’t have any obvious weaknesses in his armoury, but this year’s Vuelta route certainly plays to his strengths. He could lay down a marker as early as the summit finish at Limone Piemonte on stage 2 or the category 1 haul to Pal on stage 6.

Every Vuelta tends to have a day – or two – where the race spirals out of control and the GC is configured in unexpected ways. Witness Ben O’Connor’s race-changing win in Yunquera last year or Kuss’s effort at Javalambre in 2024.

But the sheer volume of climbing on this year’s route means that the race should still fall to the strongest rider. If Vingegaard gets outflanked by circumstance, then he has ample opportunity to reshape the Vuelta in his favour thanks to the succession of summit finishes. If Vingegaard brings his Tour form to Spain, then climbs like the Angliru, where he shone in 2023, La Farrapona and Bola del Mundo all serve as an insurance policy against surprises.

The biggest challenge, of course, should come from UAE Team Emirates-XRG, assuming that Almeida and Ayuso dovetail their efforts rather than trip over each other’s feet. Vingegaard beat Almeida at the Volta ao Algarve, but since then, the Portuguese rider has been arguably the season’s outstanding one-week rider, collecting success at Itzulia Basque Country, the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse.

Almeida was a podium contender at the Tour before a crash ruled him out at the end of the first week, but that incident may have had a residual benefit for the Vuelta, given that he arrives at the race without the exertions of a full Tour in his legs. 

Behind the UAE threat, Vingegaard will have to reckon with Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), Egan Bernal (Ineos), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), but it’s hard to shake the idea that a podium finish would be the realistic summit of their ambitions.

Vingegaard, on the other hand, is in Spain to win and win big. The Vuelta might be the least predictable of the three Grand Tours, but all logic points to a Vingegaard victory in Madrid. And unlike in July, anything less than that will be perceived as failure.  

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