(La Nucía) Jonas Vingegaard will, like Tadej Pogacar two years ago, race the Tour of Italy and the Tour de France in 2026 with the objective of becoming the eighth rider in history to have won the three major Tours.

The Dane, who unveiled his program on Tuesday during the media day of his Visma-Lease a bike team in Nucia, on the Spanish Costa Blanca, will compete for the first time in the Giro (May 8-31) of which he will be the big favorite in the absence of Pogacar.

He will then continue with the Tour de France (July 4-26) which he won in 2022 and 2023, but where he will this time start like a outsider against “Pogi”, two-time outgoing winner.

“I’ve been thinking about taking part in the Giro for a while, I feel like it’s the perfect time to make my debut. Having won the Vuelta last fall motivates me even more to win in Italy as well. I would like to add the pink jersey to my collection,” explained the Dane who will begin his season on February 16 at the UAE Tour before also racing the Tour of Catalonia (March 23-29).

“For the last five years, my program before the Tour had been more or less the same. I chose to do it differently this time. The Giro route is perhaps less demanding than in recent years, which makes the sequence with the Tour more favorable,” added Vingegaard, who dreams of winning the Tour de France a third time.

At 29 years old, Vingegaard will try to achieve the same feat as Pogacar in 2024 when the Slovenian won the Giro and the Tour hands down. The ogre of world cycling then became the eighth rider in history to achieve such a double in the same year after Marco Pantani, Miguel Indurain, Stephen Roche, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil and Fausto Coppi.

On the Giro, won in 2025 by his ex-teammate Simon Yates who announced his retirement to everyone’s surprise last week, Vingegaard will have another objective: to become the eighth rider to have won the three major Tours in his career, he who already has two Tours de France and a Vuelta to his name.

If he succeeds, he will be ahead of his great rival Pogacar who has won the Tour de France four times, the Giro once, but never the Tour of Spain where he took third place in 2019 during his only participation.

Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Alberto Contador, Vincenzo Nibali and Chris Froome are the seven riders to have won all three Grand Tours.

(Paris) The Briton Simon Yates, one of Jonas Vingegaard’s main lieutenants at Visma-Lease a Bike, winner in particular of the Giro and a stage during the 2025 Tour de France, announced on Wednesday that he was ending his career at the age of 33.

“I have made the decision to retire from professional cycling. This may surprise a lot of people, but it’s not a decision I made lightly. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I think the time is right,” Simon Yates said in a statement.

“Cycling has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. From racing on the Manchester Velodrome track to competing and winning on the biggest stages, to representing my country at the Olympic Games, he has shaped every chapter of my life,” adds the Briton.

Winner of the Tour of Spain in 2018, the Tour of Italy in 2025, the discreet climber also won three stages on the Tour de France, two in 2019 and one last summer, solo on July 14 at Mont-Dore Puy de Sancy. He also has a success at Tirreno-Adriatico in 2020 to his credit.

Twin brother of Adam, also a stage winner on the Grande Boucle, Simon Yates started his career in track cycling before switching to road cycling in 2014.

“It’s a shame that he’s stopping now, but he’s doing it at a time when he’s at the peak of his career,” said Grischa Niermann, the sports director of Visma-Lease a Bike. “Simon was an exceptional climber and overall rider who always delivered when it mattered most. At the Giro he reached his peak at a time when almost no one expected him to win anymore, which really characterizes him as a rider. »

“I am deeply proud of what I have achieved and equally grateful for the lessons it has taught me,” said Simon Yates, 15^e of the Tour de France last summer. “While the victories will always be etched in my memory, the difficult days and setbacks have been just as important. They taught me resilience and patience, and made my successes even more valuable. »

(Paris) The Lidl-Trek team announced on Tuesday the arrival for three years of Canadian climber Derek Gee-West, fourth in the last Giro before leaving the Israel PT training with a bang, to complete a very active off-season on the transfer front.

Gee-West, 28, had unilaterally and “for legitimate reasons” terminated his contract with Israel PT in August, without giving further details, while this team was targeted by pro-Palestinian demonstrations in several races.

Israel PT, which has since become NSN Cycling Team, reacted by demanding 30 million euros (48 million Canadian dollars) from the rider, opening a period of great uncertainty around the Canadian, also announced for a while by Ineos.

On Tuesday, following the announcement of Gee-West’s transfer, NSN Cycling Team announced that it had “reached an agreement, approved by the UCI, with Lidl-Trek and Derek Gee-West which will see the existing contract between Gee-West and our team come to an end”.

Lidl-Trek, which now flies under the German flag, carried out a flashy recruitment this winter by also attracting the Spaniard Juan Ayuso from UAE.

Gee-West, third in the Dauphiné and ninth in the Tour de France in 2024, and Ayuso join other general classification riders like Mattias Skjelmose and Giulio Ciccone as well as Dane Mads Pedersen in the team which plans to challenge the armadas of UAE and Visma.

“The ambition, structure and depth of talent in the team are impressive,” said Gee-West in the press release announcing his arrival.

“Lidl-Trek has world-class riders in many registers and being part of a collective capable of taking down different cards in stage races and grand Tours is something new for me,” he added. I look forward to continuing to progress as an overall rider and seeing what we can accomplish together over the next few years. »