Jumbo, the band of Jonas Vingegaard, Sepp Kuss and Wout van Aert, is no longer Jumbo, but Visma-Lease a Bike, which no longer has Primož Roglič, and with its fluorescent yellow jersey and black shorts it has left from being the mechanical banana to becoming a case of Stabilo Boss markers, so bright and martial.
And if Vingegaard, the winning star of the last two Tours, grabbed one of those in his hand and highlighted on a map of Europe the places where he will exhibit his pedal art in 2024, you would almost have to squint to avoid being dazzled. with the brilliance of the Iberian Peninsula. Of the 69 days of competition that the Dane announced on Thursday, at the presentation of his Visma and his fluorescents in Amsterdam, 32, almost half, will be spent in Spanish races. As in 2024, Vingegaard, who was close to buying a house in Malaga to spend the winters, will start the year in O Gran Camiño, the Galician race (February 22 to 25) that he monopolized (he won the three stages and the general, of course ) in 2023. After racing the Tirreno-Adriatico in March, in Italy, he will return to the peninsula to try to repeat the victory in Itzulia (April 1 to 6). The Dauphiné (June 2 to 9) and the Tour (June 29 to July 21) will keep him in France for 31 days, but, less than four weeks later, in August, he will return to the Vuelta, which will leave Lisbon on 17 (to end in Madrid on September 8), where he must resolve several pending issues.
When Tadej Pogačar was asked a few days ago what he thought his victorious rival Vingegaard would think of his decision to try to win the Giro and Tour in 2024, the jovial Slovenian said that question should be asked of the Dane. “I want to know if I can have the same level in the Tour as in the Vuelta,” said Vingegaard at the team presentation. “What we knew in 2023 is not valid because I started the Vuelta sick, so before moving on to another challenge I must know exactly what my limit is.” The new challenge will be, logically, to attempt the most prestigious Giro and Tour double (only in history have the myths Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Indurain, and Stephen Roche's devastating 1987 achieved it) against which they will give their teeth. Pogačar. “If I can't reach the necessary level in the Vuelta, I will forget about trying the Giro in 2025,” he stated. What happened to him in the last Vuelta, when he finished second, and with two stage victories, despite starting sick and having to stop to avoid stealing the red jersey from his teammate Sepp Kuss, makes his return in 2024 more than morbid.
As winner in 2023, Kuss will start with the number one number and the desire in mind to defend his title against his Danish teammate, who will only think about winning. Having already turned 27 two weeks ago and his future at Richard Plugge's Visma secured until 2028, when he turns 32, Vingegaard naturally assumes his status as leader, shyness and a certain humility forgotten. He will be accompanied in Lisbon by the great Wout van Aert, debutant in the Vuelta, and in the Giro a few months before, who for the first time will not help Vingegaard in the Tour. Visma's kid of the future, the Belgian Cian Uijtdebroeks, whose uneventful transfer from Bora has already been confirmed by the UCI, will make his debut in the Giro. The third Jumbo to take the Cibeles podium in 2023, Roglič, emigrated to Bora and, although he has not announced it yet, he will surely return to Spain and the Vuelta, the race that he has already won three times. The fight can be fierce, and the Enric Mas-Nairo Quintana couple, the strength of Movistar, will try to get involved in it.
The Tour-Vuelta double has less pedigree because fewer riders have attempted it and only the Frenchmen Jacques Anquetil (1963) and Bernard Hinault (1978) have achieved it, at the time when the Spanish round was run in April-May, two months before the Tour. Eddy Merckx (three Giro-Tour doubles and one Giro-Vuelta) never tried and in his attempt to achieve a second duo, in 1983, Hinault pushed so hard to win the Vuelta that he injured his knee and could not race the Tour . Miguel Indurain was second in the Vuelta of '91 before winning his first Tour and only returned to the Spanish round in '96, already in September, after suffering the great defeat in the Tour de Riis. The Navarrese, mentally exhausted, abandoned the Vuelta and retired from cycling. Only Chris Froome (2017) in the 21st century has won the Tour and Vuelta in the same year.
You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Limited time special offer
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Jonas #Vingegaard #return #Vuelta #España #unfinished #business