"I went to his house in Denmark" - Visma boss reveals secret post-Vuelta meeting that mapped out Jonas Vingegaard’s double Grand Tour mission in 2026

Jonas Vingegaard’s historic Giro d’Italia victory was not a spontaneous late decision from Team Visma | Lease a Bike. It was born months earlier, inside the Danish home of the rider who had just won the Vuelta a Espana and was already looking towards the next phase of his career.

Vingegaard became just the eighth rider in cycling history to win all three Grand Tours when he completed the set at the Giro in May, finishing more than five minutes clear of Felix Gall in Rome.

In a new Visma documentary, team boss Richard Plugge has revealed that the Giro project began soon after Vingegaard’s Vuelta triumph in September 2025.

The Giro gave Vingegaard the chance to complete the Grand Tour set before returning to the Tour de France with another major victory already secured. For Visma, it was a season-shaping call made long before the race reached Italy.

“Not long after the Vuelta a Espana celebration in September, Jacco and I went to his house in Denmark,” Plugge explains in the documentary, referring to Jacco Verhaeren, Visma’s head of the sporting department.

“We had a really good conversation with him, where we talked about what the next goals should be, and how we should do it. And that was where the idea of trying to win the Giro started. The idea of winning all three Grand Tours,” Plugge says.

After adding the Vuelta to his Tour de France successes, Vingegaard did not wait long before Visma started working through the next target. The answer became the Giro, where victory would move him into one of cycling’s most exclusive groups and alter the build-up to July.

Vingegaard can now head into the Tour de France with the full Grand Tour collection complete, rather than with that milestone still waiting. The pressure of facing Tadej Pogacar at the Tour has not disappeared, but the Dane arrives with a Giro victory banked and his place in cycling history already strengthened.

Plugge made clear that the plan demanded more than ambition alone. “We know there is huge competition, so we have to do everything right. It is three weeks. The process is always very important to me. Then we see the result later.”

The result came in Italy. Vingegaard controlled the Giro with the same precision that has defined much of his Grand Tour career, eventually sealing overall victory by more than five minutes over Gall.

For Visma, the success gave the post-Vuelta plan its first major payoff. The team chose a route through the Giro before returning to the Tour, rather than keeping the entire season pointed only towards July.

Barcelona now brings the next part of that plan. Another Tour de France, another direct collision with Pogacar, and another three-week test of Visma’s depth around a rider who has already won a Grand Tour in 2026.

The documentary shows how early that road was mapped out. Shortly after the Vuelta celebrations, Plugge and Verhaeren travelled to Denmark and sat down with Vingegaard to decide what should come next.

That conversation has already produced one historic Grand Tour victory. The next test is whether the same long-range planning can carry Visma through the Tour de France.