How Vingegaard's Giro preparation compares to the last ten winners — and why it's unlike anything we've seen

Teams and riders spend the winter carefully constructing the perfect Grand Tour build-up. Some prefer months at altitude; others want as many race days as possible. So what has actually made for the best Giro d'Italia preparation in recent years — and how does Jonas Vingegaard measure up? IDL Pro Cycling investigates, using the last ten winners as a guide.

Vingegaard is the runaway favourite for his debut at the Giro d'Italia, with several of the other top contenders either absent or compromised. The Dane has had a strong year, winning every race he has entered — but the path he has taken to Italy is a genuinely unusual one, and spring success is not always a reliable indicator of Giro readiness.

With 15 race days in his legs, Vingegaard is at least not doing anything unusual in terms of volume. Simon Yates, Primož Roglič, and Tom Dumoulin all won the Giro with just 14 days of racing beforehand. Tadej Pogačar, who won in 2024, had even fewer.

At the other extreme, Richard Carapaz and Jai Hindley took the opposite approach — the Ecuadorian had already accumulated 34 race days before the 2019 start in Bologna, including the Vuelta a Asturias just six days before the opening stage. He is the exception rather than the rule, and of course he is the man forced to skip the race this year through injury.

In terms of race-day count, Vingegaard is in line with other recent champions. What stands out in his build-up, however, is that he has not raced in Italy at all this year. All ten of the previous winners had raced on Italian roads in the year they won — and nine of the ten had specifically done so at Tirreno-Adriatico.

The one exception is Pogačar, who skipped Tirreno in his 2024 winning year but still raced in Italy, at Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo. Vingegaard, by contrast, has not been to Italy in competition at all. That would make him the first Giro winner without any Italian race days in the build-up since Denis Menchov in 2009. Whether a day on Italian roads genuinely matters for ultimate success in Rome will become clear over the coming weeks.

The last race Vingegaard completed before heading to altitude camp was the Volta a Catalunya — a race that all four of the most recent Giro winners also rode in their winning year. The Spanish stage race is looking increasingly like the ideal sharpener for the first Grand Tour of the season.

In terms of results, Vingegaard's Catalunya campaign places him alongside the Slovenian winners. Where Jai Hindley and Simon Yates barely cracked the top ten in the race, Vingegaard — like Pogačar and Roglič before him — actually won it.

Overall, his preparation in terms of race days, results, and altitude camp closely mirrors that of former Visma | Lease a Bike teammate Primož Roglič in 2023. This looks like a tried-and-tested Visma | Lease a Bike approach — Yates, aside from his Tirreno appearance, followed a similar trajectory too.

The major question mark remains the absence of Italian roads. Whether that matters is something only three weeks of racing can answer.