It’s testament to the scale of what Jumbo-Visma have already achieved this season that if either Jonas Vingegaard or Primož Roglič manages to stand the tallest on the Vuelta a Espana winners’ podium next Sunday September 17th, the Dutch squad itself will have earned a place in cycling’s history books.
After Roglic’s last-minute but hardfought victory in the Giro d’Italia this spring over Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers), and Vingegaard’s more emphatic defeat of Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) in the Tour de France, if either rider wins the Vuelta, Jumbo-Visma will become the first ever team ever to conquer all three Grand Tours in a single season.
No squad has come close, not even Team Sky during their golden era in the Grand Tours between 2012 and 2021.
The last team to win both Giro and Tour that managed to place a rider on the Vuelta podium, let alone win it, was Banesto in 1992, when Miguel Indurain did the so-called ‘double’ after teammate Pedro Delgado, back when the Vuelta was in April, had already finished third behind Tony Rominger in Madrid.
What’s even more remarkable, is that the stakes for both Jumbo-Visma riders on an individual level in the Vueltal is almost as high. For Roglič a fourth victory in five years in the Vuelta would constitute a record-equalling achievement alongside Roberto Heras (2000, 2003, 2004 and 2005). The Slovenian would not only be one of two riders with a maximum of four Vueltas in his palmares, he would also be the first rider to take a Giro-Vuelta double since Alberto Contador in 2008. Vingegaard, meanwhile, would become the first rider to take the Tour-Vuelta double since Chris Froome in 2017 and just the second since Bernard Hinault in 1978.
Yet for all those achievements can hardly be underestimated, it’s perhaps the team record that stands the highest against the Spanish skyline this summer. While Sky and Ineos manager Dave Brailsford sometimes raised the possibility of securing the Grand Tour Grand Slam, in fact in 2018, when Sky took Giro and Tour with Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas, their best finisher in the Vuelta was David De La Cruz in 15th. Then in 2017, when Froome won both Vuelta and Tour, Sky’s best finisher in the Giro was Mikel Landa in 17th.
In recent cycling history, no team, then, has ever shown the potential to dominate three Grand Tours in the way Jumbo-Visma may yet do this summer on the roads of Spain.
Furthermore, the Dutch squad already looked like one of the…
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