"Jonas Vingegaard sharpens his form: 'I feel like a completely different rider this year'"

While Pogačar kicked off his season in style by winning the UAE Tour in February, he then followed it up with an impressive string of results in the Spring Classics. He took victories at Strade Bianche, the Tour of Flanders, Flèche Wallonne, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, while also finishing third at Milan-San Remo and second at both Paris-Roubaix and the Amstel Gold Race.

In contrast, Vingegaard has been far less visible in the peloton this spring. There is a clear reason for that. The Dane opened his season strongly with an overall win at the Volta ao Algarve, but a crash on stage five of Paris-Nice forced him to take time off from racing. As a result, he missed the Volta a Catalunya and soon decided to fully shift his focus to his main target for 2025: reclaiming the Tour de France title.

For Vingegaard, the best possible preparation always includes plenty of altitude camps. In recent weeks, he has been training at altitude in the Sierra Nevada, just like Pogačar. It was there that he spoke with Eurosport. "I’ve always enjoyed the process of trying to reach my absolute best form for the Tour de France. The Tour is always the ultimate goal, and I love putting in the hard work during these training camps."

And hard work is exactly what is required, acknowledges the two-time Tour de France champion. "Everyone keeps raising their level, so I need to be even better than I was two years ago. Last year, I felt like I could fight for the win, but in the end that clearly wasn’t the case," said Vingegaard, who spent much of 2024 recovering from a crash at the Tour of the Basque Country.

"This year, I feel completely different. It’s both how my body is responding to the training and also how I feel about myself," Vingegaard added with confidence as he looks ahead to the key races coming up.