{"id":1970384,"date":"2026-06-01T14:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T11:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1970384"},"modified":"2026-06-01T14:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T11:19:09","slug":"vanquishing-the-giro-tour-double-stephen-roche-scrutinizes-vingegaards-chances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1970384","title":{"rendered":"Vanquishing the Giro-Tour Double: Stephen Roche Scrutinizes Vingegaard\u2019s Chances"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-956679188.jpg”]<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
Shane Stokes<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Published June 1, 2026 08:19AM<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

If all goes to plan this year, Jonas Vingegaard will follow up his Giro d\u2019Italia celebrations with jubilation at the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

If so, he will become just the ninth male rider to take the double in one year. The others? Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Stephen Roche, Miguel Indurain, Marco Pantani and Tadej Poga\u010dar.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a star-studded cast but not long ago it was deemed impossible to achieve in the modern era.<\/p>\n

Pantani\u2019s wins were way back in 1998 and when multiple riders tried and failed in the years since, many felt that the days of the Giro\/Tour celebrations were over.<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar disagreed and turned back the clock in 2024. Now Vingegaard is determined to do the same.<\/p>\n

Can he do it? What\u2019s the best way to try? Velo<\/i> spoke to Roche, winner in 1987, and got his lowdown on Vingegaard\u2019s high hopes.<\/p>\n

His verdict?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s complicated.<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018You don\u2019t sit on someone\u2019s wheel\u2019<\/h2>\n
\"Stephen
Stephen Roche (left) with Tony Rominger on stage 19 of the 1987 Giro d\u2019Italia (Photo: Graham Watson\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vingegaard is a very different rider to Poga\u010dar. The latter is very much an extrovert, ebullient in his personality and also in his way of riding the bike. He attacks at a whim, thinks nothing of striking out 100km from home, and loves to dominate his rivals.<\/p>\n

Vingegaard is more reserved as a person and also as a champion. Sure, he likes to attack. Sure, he\u2019s taken some big wins in the past. But the throw-down-the-gauntlet moves are more rare with him, more calculated.<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

And even if Saturday\u2019s final mountain stage saw him strike out for home 11km from the finish, his attacks earlier in the Giro were much more restrained.<\/p>\n

Roche said that he wasn\u2019t impressed early on with Vingegaard, noting that he sat on Felix Gall\u2019s wheel for several kilometers when the latter surged clear on the Corno alle Scale summit finish on stage 9.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re Vingegaard, a Tour de France winner, a Tour of Spain winner, going for the Giro win, you don\u2019t sit on someone\u2019s wheel for 3K,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However Roche did acknowledge that conservative approach may have been deliberate.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could say maybe the guy is riding on reserves, saying \u2018well, why go out there and break my balls when I\u2019ve got a Tour de France to come down the road? The importance is not about the winning margin but about winning.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s difficult to know what he might have had in his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018Who is going to beat Poga\u010dar?\u2019<\/h2>\n
\"Roche
Roche had to really dig in to win the Tour after taking the Giro (Photo: Nutan\/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the issues of going for the Giro-Tour double is holding form. The Giro began this year on May 8, and concluded May 31. The Tour runs from July 4 to 27. In all that\u2019s a window of two and a half months, which is a long, long time to be \u2018on.\u2019<\/p>\n

Does Roche see benefits to Vingegaard trying not to go too deep in the Giro?<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWell, it\u2019s definitely a good tactic, if he\u2019s for real, and he really, really believes that the Tour is possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut no matter what he does in the Giro, no matter if he wins it by a minute or 10 minutes, the Tour is going to be very, very hard to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, looking at it from the outside, I would say that you can read into it in different ways. On one side, you can say \u2018who is going to beat Poga\u010dar?\u2019 Is Vingegaard going to beat Poga\u010dar? I don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead Roche feels that something else may be going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I am Mr. Visma looking for a sponsor for next year, am I better off sending Vingegaard to the Giro where there is nobody there, where he can win it, and making a nice story that we can go out and win the double?<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIf Vingegaard goes out and wins the Giro, it gives them a platform to go and look for sponsors based on that. Whereas if you wait for the Tour and he comes second at the Tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think there\u2019s a lot of things to be put on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another reason, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, Vingegaard needs to win a big Tour. He\u2019s a guy that\u2019s paid a lot of money, he\u2019s got a status to maintain, and I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any confidence in being able to beat Poga\u010dar. We can see what Poga\u010dar has done in the last couple of years. He is very difficult to beat unless there is injury or bad luck.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven mentally it\u2019ll even give him a lot more comfort, because he\u2019s won his major tour, he\u2019s fulfilled his contract for this year. Everything he does from here is a bonus. And if a dangerous break goes clear, he can say to the others, \u2018I won my tour already. If you guys want to win, you have got to chase that break down.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

And at the same time Mr. Visma is out there looking for a sponsor for the team. If Vingegaard has already won the Giro, it\u2019s a nice fairy tale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I finished the Giro totally wasted\u2019<\/h2>\n
\"Stephen
Stephen Roche (left) faced boos and violence after taking the lead from Italian teammate Roberto Visentini (Photo: Graham Watson\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Others might see things differently about his prospects.<\/p>\n

Vingegaard beat a long-standing record of Marco Pantani on the Piancavallo climb on Saturday, something many had presumed was unmatchable. And Visma-Lease a Bike were clear on Sunday that Vingegaard has further room for improvement, and should be even better at the Tour.<\/p>\n

That remains to be seen, but are there lessons from how Roche won his double and what Vingegaard should do now?<\/p>\n

In replying, Roche makes clear that there are differences in the two situations. For one, he had to deal with a huge amount of mental strain, having caused near-riots in Italy when he rode against his own teammate Roberto Visentini, who was holding the race lead.<\/p>\n

Spectators spat at him and struck him; his team threatened to send him home.<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cMy problem was there was only 18 days between them. That was my big thing,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd also I finished the Giro totally wasted with all the goings on. So I just wanted to stay away from everybody, no press conferences, no press interference, no extra fatigue.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy main thing was to recover, recover, recovery, which meant going out for recovery rides every day, or whatever, and staying out of the limelight.<\/p>\n

Roche didn\u2019t race at all between the two events. That was partly to do with that goal of recovery, but there was another reason too.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne reason why I kept away from events was to avoid the contact with the press, to avoid repeating myself with questions and everything else. Because journalists would say, \u2018Hey, Stephen, how you fixed? Have you got five minutes for an interview?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhereas today everything goes through the press officer first, so it\u2019s a luxury.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The benefits of information<\/h2>\n
\"Stephen
Stephen Roche was one of only eight riders to take the Giro-Tour double in the same year (Photo: Pascal Pavan \/ AFP)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It remains to be seen if Vingegaard will ride any events prior to the grand d\u00e9part<\/em> on July. As things stand he is not scheduled to do anything prior to the Tour start on July 4. But although that\u2019s a considerably longer gap than Roche had between his two grand tours, he doesn\u2019t anticipate any problem for the Dane.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has got a month to go or five weeks to go before the Tour,\u201d he said. \u201cBut compared to our generation, we never knew where we were physically. We always felt we had to race to make sure our morale was good and to see where we are. Whereas today the guys know exactly where they are with all the data they have.<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cSo Vingegaard knows he can finish the Giro and will knows his statistics from where he is. They can prepare then an altitude training camp or whatever they need to do, and they can go on the numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen these guys Vingegaard, Poga\u010dar, Van der Poel going on training camps and coming back and winning. They\u2019re capable of winning because they know exactly where they are with the numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really 100 percent necessary to race in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if Roche feels Vingegaard\u2019s odds of beating Poga\u010dar are slim, he does see an advantage to him riding the Giro before the Tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand Vingegaard when he says that he\u2019s often done better in a second tour,\u201d he said. \u201cYou definitely can dig deeper. Riding a major tour, like a three week tour, does give you a lot of stamina and a lot of foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when the going gets tough, you can dig in deeper.<\/p>\n

\n
ADVERTISEMENT<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI think that riding a major tour is definitely an advantage for a GC rider. It does help you go a little deeper in the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
Shane Stokes<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Published June 1, 2026 08:19AM<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/giro-tour-stephen-roche\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-956679188.jpg”] Shane Stokes Published June 1, 2026 08:19AM If all goes to plan this year, Jonas Vingegaard will follow up his Giro d\u2019Italia celebrations with jubilation at the Tour de France. If so, he will become just the ninth male rider to take the double in one year. The others? Fausto Coppi, Jacques […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-1970384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1970384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1970384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1970384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1970384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}