Is Pogacar unbeatable? Visma's mountain domestique Piganzoli had his doubts at the 2026 Tour de France

Piganzoli joined Visma | Lease a Bike this year from Polti VisitMalta and made a great impression during his debut for the team. The 24-year-old Italian won the Route d'Occitanie, the Tour of Luxembourg, and the Giro dell'Emilia, and finished eighth in the Giro d'Italia while supporting Vingegaard. He was also called up at the last minute for his very first Tour de France. It all happened incredibly fast.

"When I set off for the Tour, I was pretty calm," he tells Bici.Pro. "I knew I was doing great and that, thanks to my performance in the Giro, I’d be able to keep up with the top 15–20 riders in France as well. The biggest difference from the Giro was the moment I started to accelerate on the climbs. In the Giro, I still had 5–10 riders on my wheel; in the Tour, there were 50. I’ll admit it was pretty tough mentally.”

Still, he was more nervous about the Giro d’Italia, where he helped his team leader secure the overall victory. “I felt more pressure during the Giro because it was the race I’d been preparing for since the start of the season. I went into it full of enthusiasm, eager to prove to the team that I could handle the task and live up to the responsibility they’d entrusted to me.”

In the Tour de France, Vingegaard was once again aiming for the overall victory. After a week, things weren’t looking great for him: he had already lost nearly three minutes to Pogacar. By the time the Dane dropped out in Stage 15, his deficit had grown to 4:30 minutes. Even after his DNF, Pogacar remained the undisputed master, setting, among other feats, a crushing record on Alpe d’Huez. Yet Visma | Lease a Bike continued to ride hard for the yellow jersey until their team leader dropped out.

"As long as Jonas was still in the race, we were working to win the Tour, not to finish second," says the Italian. "We didn’t assume he couldn’t win: we did what we set out to do. Even on the day of the crash, we started at the front with the intention of dictating the pace of the race. Make up four minutes? We had seen his strengths."

The Italian even considered Pogacar to be in worse form than in previous years, despite breaking all records. “Jonas had some trouble adjusting to the changes in pace at the start of the Tour, but on the day of Le Markstein, when Vingegaard began to dictate the pace, Pogacar seemed less brilliant than usual.” On Le Markstein, Pogacar claimed his fourth stage victory, putting Vingegaard three-quarters of a minute behind.