"A lot of mountains, which is good" - Visma react to Tour de France route that suits Jonas Vingegaard quite well

The 2026 Tour de France is one that will feature a lot more diversity when it comes to mountain stages than this year's, and also some higher and more difficult peaks. After the route presentation Team Visma | Lease a Bike's DS Grischa Niermann shared his thoughts on the route and is quite satisfied with it.

”Overall the route looks nice. Of course we will have to analyse it further and dive into each stage, but there are definitely a lot of mountains, which is good," Niermann said in a press release issued by the team.

The route will feature over 56.000 meters of climbing accumulate, and is a race where the GC fight begins right on day 1, which will make for a very fatiguing race. All first three stages can see small differences whilst the riders enter the mountains on stage 6 with the Col du Tourmalet as the highlight of the day.

However it is also a backloaded race, which will certainly not make it easy for Tadej Pogacar to build a big gap in the first half of the race as happened this year. Into stage 14 this year, the Slovenian already had over 4 minutes to Vingegaard. In this case, there is only one high mountain stage before stage 14, and that is the day where it truly begins with the action in the Vosges.

"We start the race with a team time trial, and we always put focus on those, so that’s a good opportunity to go for the stage win and also hopefully win a little time. I also think the intermediate stages look quite interesting," he added.

The race will truly be decided on the Alps, mainly on the Plateau de Solaison and then in the two stages up to Alpe d'Huez. The final colossal day in the mountains will be stage 20 with 5600 meters of climbing in only 171 kilometers, a queen stage packed with long climbs and altitude, just as Vingegaard thrives in.

”The mountains are spread out over the course, but it’s still quite backloaded with a hard last week. It looks like stage 20 will be the big queen stage of the race with multiple long climbs, so hopefully the fight for the yellow jersey will still be on by then," the German adds.

He does particularly keep a close eye on that final mountain stage, which as in the past, could be used by Visma to try and make the difference for Jonas Vingegaard. "Croix de Fer and Galibier are beautiful but really hard. Alpe d’Huez is indeed also a very iconic climb, but stage 19 will be more explosive with a big showdown there, as there are no major climbs before. The Tour de France is always a hard a race, and next year will be the same. It could suit Jonas well, but again, we have to look further into the stages.”