“He has to be able to hold it all the way through the Tour” - Jonas Vingegaard facing delicate post-Giro balancing act before Pogacar showdown

Jonas Vingegaard’s Tour de France preparation has entered its final and most delicate phase, with former Danish national coach Anders Lund warning that the Team Visma | Lease a Bike leader must balance one last training push with recovery from his Giro d’Italia triumph.

Vingegaard was crowned Giro winner just a few weeks ago, taking five stage victories along the way, but there has been little time to enjoy the achievement.

The Dane is now preparing for a Tour de France showdown with Tadej Pogacar, with the Barcelona Grand Depart on July 4 leaving only a short turnaround between one three-week race and the next.

Lund, now a cycling expert with Eurosport Denmark, believes the work at this stage is no longer about dramatically changing Vingegaard’s condition. It is about finding the last edge without draining the reserves he will need across another Grand Tour.

“I think he is polishing the final things he can on his form,” Lund said in his latest Eurosport analysis. “Now I do not know his precise programme, but he is probably packing his bag from the altitude training camp and is on his way down to sea level to do some things there. But he is putting the finishing touch on his form.”

That final block comes after an unusual build-up. Vingegaard has not followed a conventional Tour route built around altitude training and a short warm-up race. He arrives in this period with the Giro in his legs, a major victory already secured, and barely a month to reset before facing Pogacar again.

Lund believes the challenge is to preserve what Vingegaard gained in Italy while still nudging the body towards another peak. “Now we are getting close,” said the former national coach. “And then it is this balance between recovering ahead of three weeks and having given the body the final stress that creates the last form curve.”

The Giro victory gives Vingegaard a different kind of platform before the Tour. Lund described the Dane as having come out of Italy in “super form,” but that leaves little margin in the final weeks. Too little work and the edge can fade. Too much, and the recovery cost could appear later in July.

“But overall, it has been an exercise for Jonas Vingegaard to balance exactly those two things: recovery after the Giro while also preserving some form, and preferably finding an extra layer because of the super form he came out with,” Lund explained.

Vingegaard has already shown that his level is high enough to dominate the Giro. The Tour asks whether that level can survive another three-week load against the strongest rival in the sport.

“That means you can train even harder, but also balance that against the recovery, which is also important, plus the fact that he has to be able to hold it all the way through the Tour,” Lund added.

Pogacar’s own Tour build-up has looked far more straightforward from the outside. The UAE Team Emirates - XRG leader returned at the Tour de Suisse, won three stages and the overall title, and has reached July without a Giro recovery puzzle to manage.

Vingegaard’s route is more complex. Winning the Giro has strengthened his season and his status, but it has also left Team Visma | Lease a Bike with a careful final calculation before the Tour begins. They need the form that carried him through Italy, enough freshness to survive three more weeks, and enough of an extra layer to meet Pogacar when the race reaches its decisive mountain days.

The answer will come quickly once the Tour moves beyond the opening exchanges. If Vingegaard has judged the balance correctly, the Giro could become the foundation for a historic double attempt. If the recovery cost appears in the mountains, Pogacar may not need much invitation to expose it.