More questions than answers as Vingegaard’s 2026 gets off to false start

Last Friday, two high-profile Nordic sports stars with lofty aspirations for 2026 announced that physical setbacks had delayed the start of their seasons. One outlined his injury in full in a video on his YouTube channel, explaining the thinking behind his choice of treatment in considerable detail. The other limited himself to a short statement from his team that shed no light whatsoever on the nature of his physical problems.

There are no prizes for guessing which was Norwegian middle-distance runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen and which was Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard. Not for the first time, the communication from Visma | Lease a Bike regarding their star rider’s condition has left much to be desired. While Ingebrigtsen went into the granular detail of his Achilles surgery, Visma furnished only the broadest of brushstrokes about Vingegaard’s physical problems. 

When he had crashed in training the previous week, Visma’s bulletin simply stated that Vingegaard “did not sustain any serious injuries.” When Vingegaard announced his withdrawal from the UAE Tour four days later, Visma’s statement pointed to “a recent crash followed by illness” without going into any specifics.

Even Denmark’s only other Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis, who wasn’t exactly from the Ingebrigtsen school of media relations during his time as a rider and manager, saw fit to question the communication strategy around Vingegaard. 

“The unfortunate thing for the rest of us when it comes to Jonas is that we never get any communication about where he stands from the Visma team,” Riis told Ekstra Bladet. “It’s the same problem over and over again. We also haven’t heard anything about how the crash affected him.”

By giving such a vague explanation for Vingegaard’s withdrawal from the UAE Tour, Visma must have known that they were creating a vacuum that would inevitably be filled by speculation. Monday’s news that Vingegaard’s long-term coach Tim Heemskerk is leaving Visma with immediate effect only adds to the sense that all is not as it should be within the team. 

While Visma’s information on Vingegaard’s crash and illness was restrained to a fault, a surprising expression of candour slipped into the statement announcing Heemskerk’s departure, with the coach himself quoted as saying: “over the past two to three months, creativity and passion have had too little room in my daily work. That is exactly why it is time to stop.”

It was a very striking comment for Visma to publish given the recurring critiques of their apparent tendency to micromanage every aspect of their riders’ preparations, something recently touched upon by Tom Dumoulin in an interview with El País.

The loss of Heemskerk wouldn’t be quite so noteworthy, however, if it hadn’t come at a time when Visma seem beset by ill fortune and external criticism at every turn. The year began on a sour note when Wout van Aert suffered an ankle fracture at the Zilvermeercross on January 2, and there was another blow a week later when Giro d’Italia champion Simon Yates surprised everybody – including, it seems, his own team – by announcing his retirement with immediate effect. In December, Fem van Empel had already put her career on indefinite hold, stepping away from her contract with Visma.

The start of the road season has so far offered little respite from the prevailing trend, with Matthew Brennan’s stage win at the Tour Down Under the lone highlight. At the weekend, Sepp Kuss abandoned the Tour of Oman through illness, with Bart Lemmen crashing out later the same day.

In the meantime, the methodology that had carried Visma to such heights in recent years is being cast in a different light following Yates’ and Van Empel’s retirements. There is a growing sense that the push for every imaginable gain, in nutrition, in altitude training, in equipment, has backfired by causing riders to burn out.

Van Aert, currently stationed at altitude in Sierra Nevada as he prepares for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, pushed back against the idea in an interview for Laurens ten Dam’s Live Slow Ride Fast podcast, insisting that the intense demands of contemporary cycling and the associated risks of burn-out are not unique to Visma. 

“To make it something that belongs to our team, I find that a pity,” Van Aert said. “It even hurts a bit, because I really see it as my team.”

Van Aert has a point, but he surely isn’t blind to the fact that Visma are navigating a period of considerable flux, last year’s two Grand Tour victories notwithstanding. 2026 has begun with far more questions than answers for Richard Plugge’s team.

Yet it would be premature to couch this as a full-blown crisis for the time being. Yes, UAE Team Emirates-XRG are already up and running with nine wins so far and Remco Evenepoel has made an immediate impact at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, but it’s worth noting that three of Visma’s key men – Vingegaard, Van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson – have yet to turn a pedal in anger this season. 

Visma’s season will ultimately be judged on whether Vingegaard succeeds in his ambitious tilt at the Giro-Tour double. The number of race days he does or doesn’t clock up in the opening months of the season will be a mere footnote come the summer. 

It’s also worth recalling that vague communication about Vingegaard’s absence from racing is nothing new. When he surprisingly toppled Tadej Pogačar to win his first Tour in 2022, Vingegaard essentially disappeared from view for the rest of the summer, opting to skip what would have amounted to a lap of honour at the Tour of Denmark.

When Visma directeur sportif Frans Maassen explained Vingegaard’s absence by revealing he had endured a “tough time” after winning the Tour, there was open speculation that the Dane was suffering from burn-out. 

That proved to be an exaggeration. After landing on the moon by carrying yellow to Paris, it seems that Vingegaard had simply preferred to come back down to earth by recharging his batteries at home. He would return to action two months later with two stage wins at the CRO Tour and he would defend his Tour title in emphatic fashion against Pogačar the following summer.

In that light, Vingegaard’s absence from the UAE Tour and the sudden departure of his coach doesn’t automatically mean that something is rotten in the state of the Dane’s entire approach to his season. He has never needed a huge amount of race days to hit form, after all, and let’s not forget that Pogačar himself only raced one stage race before tackling the Giro-Tour double two years ago.

“Jonas isn’t missing a lot of training, but little things can influence,” head of racing Grischa Niermann told Daniel Benson on Tuesday. “There’s absolutely nothing worrying.” In the same article, Visma confirmed that head of performance Mathieu Heijboer would now oversee Vingegaard’s training.

The message from Visma is that it’s business as usual for Vingegaard. But they must know the questions will linger until he pins on a number this season.