For a few seconds, it looked like this Vuelta a España had delivered its first twist, and a cruel one at that. Jonas Vingegaard, the red hot favourite, was on the floor along with three of his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates. There were 27km remaining of stage two of the race, and Vingegaard, Matteo Jorgenson and Sepp Kuss – the team’s, if not the race’s, three strongest climbers – were all off their bikes, along with their teammate Axel Zingle. Wet weather and oily roads had taken down the man pretty much everyone expects to win.
But while Zingle struggled to finish the stage, finishing dead last, Vingegaard won the stage. No issues from the crash. On an uphill finish in Limone Piemonte, Vingegaard waited, waited some more, and then attacked in the closing metres, passing Lidl-Trek’s Giulio Ciccone to win by half-a-bike bike length. Remarkably, due to the dominance of a certain Slovenian, it was Vingegaard’s first road win since stage 11 of last year’s Tour de France.
And talking of that man with the initials TP, Vingegaard’s move was uncannily similar to how he’s so often got the better of the Dane in recent times. He learned a thing or two from watching his back wheel, it seems. Vingegaard certainly isn’t slow sprinting to the line, but these sort of punchy finales typically lend themselves more to his absent nemesis, and the likes of the present Ciccone and Tom Pidcock. The latter showed his face but only finished 10th, while the former just missed out on scoring an Italian win on home roads during the Vuelta’s staging in the country.
The story, however, was all about Vingegaard. Given their great rivalry, it’s impossible – if not admittedly reductive – not to compare everything Vingegaard does with that of his adversary, and there’s already a striking symmetry with the 2024 Giro d’Italia. Tadej Pogačar began that Grand Tour as the overwhelming favourite, and by day two was in the race lead. He never relinquished pink. After the opening weekend of the Vuelta, Vingegaard is already at the top of the general classification, red his and perhaps for the next three weeks.
He claimed afterwards that he has a few bruises after going “down pretty hard”, but his response was emphatic. It’s an ominous sign for his rivals: he can be taken out at close to 60 km/h, slide across the floor, crash into carbon and all the metal parts of a bike, and still remount, chase back to the peloton at full speed, get back on, let the pretenders jockey it out on the steepest part of the climbs, and then crush their dreams just at the right moment. It was a fine lesson in fortitude.
“It’s definitely a start,” he said of the 12 seconds he has on João Almeida and Juan Ayuso, co-leaders at UAE Team Emirates-XRG and the other top two podium contenders. “I’m really looking forward to the upcoming stages. Today I showed I am where I want to be, the legs are good, and for the upcoming 19 days hopefully I'll also feel good.” There’ll be far tougher tests – the feared Angliru on stage 13 is just one example – but like Pogačar always professes: it’s better to get in front early and stay in front, rather than be chasing.
Not since he won the 2023 Tour de France, his second successive victory in the race, has Vingegaard led a three-week race, so the Dane was happy to be reacquainted with a once familiar feeling. ‘It’s been a few years since I’ve worn the leader’s jersey in a Grand Tour,” he acknowledged. There’s a very real prospect that red will not depart his shoulders at any point in the coming three weeks. Crashed, bruised, but clearly the best – Vingegaard’s Vuelta is up and running.
