Jonas Vingegaard Launches Most Audacious Season Yet at Paris-Nice

Jonas Vingegaard will fast-track his most audacious season yet with a start at Paris-Nice after a crash and subsequent illness forced him out of a planned season debut at last week’s UAE Tour.

The Danish leader of Visma-Lease a Bike confirmed he has fully recovered and is amped to race after a disrupted start to his 2026 campaign.

“I am excited to be at the start of Paris-Nice once again. It is a prestigious race with a lot of history,” Vingegaard said Monday. “As a team, we have a title to defend here. After crashing and falling ill, I took the necessary time to recover. Now I feel ready to start racing again and am looking forward to it after a long winter of training.”

The two-time Tour de France winner had originally targeted the UAE Tour as his early-season hit out, but a training crash compounded by illness in Spain’s wet winter last month ended that plan.

Better safe than sorry, so the “Race to the Sun” — one of cycling’s legendary one-week races — is his first major target in a calendar reshuffle in what will be an audacious Giro-Tour double attempt in 2026.

His rough start this season — which included a high-profile crash involving a following fan — echoes equally turbulent springs in both 2024, with his season-altering crash at Itzulia Basque Country, and again last year at Paris-Nice.

He crashed out of the French stage race last March with a concussion that derailed his momentum and reshaped his build-up going into the annual and inevitable Tour clash with Tadej Pogačar.

Avoiding more setbacks

Vingegaard’s return to racing will help bring some fresh momentum to what’s been a rocky start to 2026 for Visma.

Visma will start as defending champion, but Matteo Jorgenson — who won back-to-back editions — is taking on a new challenge at Tirreno-Adriatico.

For Vingegaard, even more important than winning is to re-establish race rhythm and avoid more crashes or setbacks before his most ambitious season yet.

Vingegaard is embracing the elusive Giro d’Italia and Tour de France double this summer, and if he wants to win pink and challenge for yellow, there is little margin for error.

Any further crashes, illness, or interruptions could prove fatal against the unstoppable force of Pogačar.

The Slovenian, meanwhile, opens his season at Strade Bianche as he puts early-season focus on completing the monument sweep.

That means the sport’s two dominant grand tour forces will not face off before July, with their only direct showdown set for the Tour.

With many of the peloton’s top and rising stars already posting big results early in 2026, Vingegaard will want to remind everyone he is still a force to reckon with.