“There is nothing left in the battery for him this year” – Former Tour de France stage winner backs Jonas Vingegaard’s decision to end 2026 season
CyclingMonday, 17 August 2026 at 12:15
Former Tour de France stage winner Nicki Sorensen has backed Jonas Vingegaard’s decision to end his 2026 season, insisting the Dane had already emptied the tank before his Tour de France crash brought the year to a premature close.
Team Visma | Lease a Bike confirmed on Monday that Vingegaard will not race again this year as he continues to recover from the collarbone fracture suffered on stage 15 of the Tour. The decision ends any prospect of a late-season return and shifts his focus towards 2027.
Sorensen believes the call was entirely logical given the volume of racing, altitude work and preparation Vingegaard had already packed into the season.
“For me, it is completely understandable,” the TV 2 Sport cycling expert said. “He has really gone for it this year and raced a lot, and he has also approached the whole thing very, very seriously. For a large part of the time when he hasn’t been racing, he has been at altitude training camps.”
“There is nothing left in the battery”
Vingegaard had already completed one of the heaviest programmes of his career before the Tour crash. He won Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya before taking five stages and overall victory at the Giro d’Italia, completing his collection of all three Grand Tours.
Just five weeks later he started the Tour de France in pursuit of the Giro-Tour double, only for a stage 15 crash to leave him with the fractured collarbone that ultimately ended his season.
Sorensen says he had already expected the Tour to mark the end of Vingegaard’s season even before the injury intervened. “I had actually expected that once his Tour de France was over, we wouldn’t see any more of him,” he said. “Then he crashes and abandons halfway through the race, but they have chosen to end his season anyway, and I completely understand that.”
The former Danish champion, who won a Tour de France stage during his own career, believes Vingegaard had already pushed far enough for one season. “There is nothing left in the battery for him this year, so he just needs to look ahead,” Sorensen concluded.
Vingegaard completed the set of Grand Tour titles with his Giro win earlier this year
Visma already looking towards 2027
Visma have now shifted Vingegaard’s programme fully towards 2027 after confirming that the collarbone injury delayed his return to training too much for another race block this year.
“Due to the collarbone injury, the start of my training has been delayed and it is not possible for me to get back to top level in the coming period,” Vingegaard said in Visma’s announcement. “The focus is on preparing optimally for the goals of the 2027 season. I will discuss these specific goals with the team in the coming period.”
Sports director Marc Reef said Visma had always planned to reassess Vingegaard’s programme after the Tour, with the crash and collarbone fracture ultimately settling the question.
Vingegaard closes 2026 with overall victories at Paris-Nice, the Volta a Catalunya and the Giro d’Italia, alongside five Giro stage wins, before his Tour challenge ended in France.
His next race will come in 2027, with Visma and Vingegaard set to decide the major targets of that campaign over the coming weeks.
Kieran WoodDeputy Editor-in-Chief
Kieran Wood is a sports journalist based in Wales and has been active in journalism since 2022. He regularly contributes to DartsNews.com and CyclingUpToDate.com, where he covers professional cycling and darts. In cycling, his work includes liveblogs from major races, including the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta a España, alongside race reports and analysis. He has also conducted interviews with professional riders.
His reporting spans the full racing calendar, from one-day classics to stage races, with a focus on accurate, real-time coverage and clear contextual analysis. For statistics, results, and historical context, he regularly uses resources such as ProCyclingStats. To support reporting on rider activity and training context where relevant, he also references Strava.
In his work, Kieran places strong emphasis on careful sourcing, editorial accuracy, and updating articles as new, verified information becomes available.
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- What you've described is certainly possible. But if Pog didn't exist then various aspects may have been different, leading to other outcomes. Roglic would have won the Tour in 2020, and may have remained undisputed leader of Jumbo-Visma in 2021 and 2022. Visma would not have (still) been out for revenge in 2022, so may have instructed Jonas to keep supporting Roglic instead of going for the win himself. (and not have focused so much on developong Jonas). 2024 would not have been Jonas's hattrick year at the Tour, so after his Itzulia crash (if indeed he rode Itzulia) he might have skipped that Tour. But Jonas may have had to change teams to get out from Roglic's shadow. And so on, you see what I mean :) (Not to be taken too seriously)Hills3317-08-2026
- now it gets stupid. why on earth should everyone be proud of their country or even love it? i am german ...Ketterechts17-08-2026
- Van der Poel has to be higher than Vingegaard there I’d say. Vingegaard counts as of now as obviously a superb grand tour rider but certainly not a stand out all time great - and doesn’t even meaningfully compete in for example Liege - while VdP does stand out as an all-time great Classics rider. You can’t just stack everything too much towards the Grand Tour riders.AndrewK17-08-2026
- I think you will find THAT is not the reason because you find the same happens in all sorts of sports and other walks of life where there are no dangers. Celebrities, actors, musicians, athletes, etc. Most people (for many different reasons) don’t search very far outside their environment (job, village, nationality, race, social class, etc.) And yes, I’m saying it’s dangerous, I’m NOT saying you can make it safe but you can eliminate unnecessary risk without disproportionate costs. You don’t go climbing with a used rope or diving without backup, you don’t work on motorways without deviating traffic, you don’t touch electrical cables without switching off a fuse. The problem with incidents is that they usually occur because we’ve placed our trust in others assuming they’ve checked safety for us only to discover they cut corners and didn’t warn anyone. Read up on the Irish teen who died by electrocution in a shower in Greece and you’ll know what that means. No rider can go check safety during a race, if they could though, do you really think they’d accept racing down a dangerous swerving road knowing there was no-one ahead to block a car from entering at any time? As amateurs you often have to race on open roads where you’re told specifically to take care that sections are open to traffic, you NEVER see anyone cutting all the way to the inside of a blind corner at full speed in those situations, why? Because when you csn choose your own level of risk, you inherently decide better than what having faith alone can offer.Mistermaumau17-08-2026
- Equal but not the same, try thinking past the first degree, you have thousands of years of knowledge, education and progress within access to reach enlightenment.Mistermaumau17-08-2026
- Sorry to break it to you but this is hardly surprising as it’s pretty common. Most men would stay lazy assed f’s, lisers or dead if someone wasn’t behind them pushing them to be useful. Have a good look around you. Don’t forget your mother in your thoughts, or maybe you regret how you turned out, probably mostly thanks to her?Mistermaumau17-08-2026
- Don’t ask people to change their povs ;-)Mistermaumau17-08-2026
- And those 19 were probably spent plotting;-)Mistermaumau17-08-2026
- @mistermaumau if your point is that cycling is dangerous and no-one should want their loved ones to be in danger, well that is a completely irrelevant point because most of the peloton has long since accepted that. It's part of the reason why so many of the pros have spouses who are cyclists. Tadej Pogačar, Isaac del Toro, Giulio Pellizzari are three that popped into my head instantly
Rafionain-Glas17-08-2026 - Totally, You can go even further and criticise some of the biggest riders (some others can say they have little choice) but when you’re a superstar and can basically pick and choose who to ride for and under what conditions, what does it say about you (or the set-up) that you voluntarily continue to work for dubious people getting paid by immoral money? If your favourite riders accepts the past doping legacy then who are you to demand others should get ignored? Be a man and take things into your own hands, stop being a hypocrite, ignore them yourself, don’t comment or draw attention because the more you do the more you encourage their continued relevance.Mistermaumau17-08-2026
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