“There is a clear difference” – Visma soldier contrasts Simon Yates-led Giro with Jonas Vingegaard’s 2026 ambition

Inside Team Visma | Lease a Bike, the Giro d’Italia is no longer being spoken about as an endpoint. For riders tasked with doing the hardest work in the mountains, the tone around the race has shifted, and Bart Lemmen has quietly articulated why.

Speaking ahead of the new season, the 30-year-old all-rounder described a clear contrast between last year’s Giro, led by Simon Yates, and the way the team is now approaching the race with Jonas Vingegaard as its focal point. “There is a clear difference,” Lemmen explained. “We’re going there with ambition, and I enjoy fighting for the win together with Jonas,” he said, in an interview with Wielerflits.

Visma’s Giro in 2025 ended in success. Yates delivered the overall victory, validating the team’s decision to pivot after a disrupted Tour de France campaign. It was a win built on control, depth, and experience, and internally it was regarded as a job executed well.

But Lemmen’s words underline that the context around the 2026 Giro is fundamentally different.

With Vingegaard, the Giro is not being framed as a standalone opportunity or an alternative objective. Instead, it sits inside a much broader ambition: completing a Grand Tour trilogy while simultaneously reshaping the Dane’s path back towards Tour de France dominance.

That distinction matters for the riders around him.

Lemmen is not a rider chasing personal headlines. A former soldier who arrived late to the professional peloton, he has built his value through reliability, sacrifice, and resilience. Those traits are exactly why his perspective carries weight.

“I think I’ve proven myself within the team and in Grand Tours,” he said. “But we have such a strong squad. I’ve even said to the team management before that if I don’t go to a Grand Tour, that wouldn’t be the biggest surprise. Still, this is what I enjoy the most.”

That mindset is central to Visma’s approach in 2026. Around Vingegaard, the Giro squad is being shaped not just to defend pink day by day, but to manage effort, stress and form across a much longer season arc.

The contrast Lemmen draws is not a criticism of Yates’ Giro. It is a reflection of intent.

Yates’ victory came at a moment when Visma were recalibrating. Vingegaard’s Giro comes with something more assertive attached to it. The race is being treated as a platform, not a destination, and that inevitably changes how domestiques approach their roles.

For riders like Lemmen, that means committing fully to a leader whose Giro ambitions are inseparable from his Tour de France objectives.

If Vingegaard succeeds in Italy, he will become the first rider of his generation to win all three Grand Tours. But inside Visma, the bigger picture is already clear. This Giro is not about ticking a box. It is about momentum, belief and redefining what comes next.

And as Lemmen puts it, that is where the difference lies.