Part one of Jonas Vingegaard’s Giro-Tour double mission is complete. Now he’s turning his attention to part two: winning the Tour de France for the first time since 2023.The Visma-Lease a Bike rider wrapped up a comfortable GC victory at the Giro d’Italia on Sunday, beating Felix Gall of Decathlon CMA CGM by more than five minutes. During three weeks of racing in Italy, Vingegaard won five of the six mountain stages as he dominated proceedings with apparent ease.In claiming the maglia rosa, the Dane became only the eighth man in history to win all three of cycling’s Grand Tours.The 29-year-old is targeting even more history this summer, as he seeks to become just the ninth man to win the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France in the same year. To do so he must beat his eternal rival Tadej Pogačar, who is going for a joint-record fifth yellow jersey.At the end of the Giro, Vingegaard confidently declared that “I believe I will be in very, very good shape for the Tour de France.” That belief was echoed by Visma’s head of performance Mathieu Heijboer, who told The Athletic that “for sure, there will be a closer battle between Jonas and Tadej than last year”.In 2025, Pogačar won four stages and beat Vingegaard by 4:24. “I am really confident we will have a proper fight again,” Heijboer added. “This will be the sixth year in a row that we will see those two fight for spots one and two in the Tour.”With just over four weeks until the Tour gets under way with a team time trial in Barcelona, The Athletic looks at what Vingegaard needs to do to reduce the pair’s Tour head-to-head record to 3-4.Vingegaard was peerless in the Italian mountains in May – July promises to be significantly tougher (Luca Bettini / AFP via Getty Images)Conventional wisdom states riding the Giro d’Italia fatigues a GC rider before the Tour de France, and that they enter the second Grand Tour in worse condition than if they had instead spent May training at altitude and warmed up for the Tour with a week-long stage race in June.History largely supports that case: it took 26 years for a rider to last claim the Giro-Tour double, between Marco Pantani’s 1998 successes and Pogačar’s 2024 victories.But there are two reasons why Vingegaard has continued to insist that he’s not worried about being in weaker shape come the Tour.The first is that the two times he’s ridden the Vuelta a España after the Tour (also with a gap of four to five weeks in between) his performance numbers were better. He won last year’s Spanish race, and was probably the best rider in the 2023 race, which was won by his Jumbo-Visma team-mate Sepp Kuss.The second reason is that he didn’t have a serious rival at the Giro, with many analysts believing he was only riding at 90% of his full capacity. “Definitely,” Heijboer — who since March has been Vingegaard’s coach — responded when asked if Vingegaard could have gone deeper at the Giro.“I always get asked to compare his top shape or what percentage he is at, but it’s difficult to say. What is key for him and for us is that he was never really pushed to the limit [by others at the Giro]. The only time was when he pushed himself.“Instead of attacking from kilometre zero to the finish for the win he didn’t have to push himself to defend his position or to track an important move and that makes a huge difference to how he will come out of this race.”In the stages that he controlled and dominated, Visma witnessed a rider who was operating at his peak. “In the first week Jonas got a little bit affected by the weather, like many others in the peloton, but once he got over this cold the true Jonas was back at work, reaching a very high level,” Heijboer continued.“We can say that the level he reached, especially on uphill finishes in the last week, was very high, maybe even higher than we expected.”Better than ever? “With the level he is at now, way better than when he won the Tour,” Heijboer said. “But the sport and especially the elite riders have developed so quickly. It might sound strange to say that he’s now better than before, but Pogačar has developed really fast since 2023; other riders like [Paul] Seixas are coming; Remco [Evenepoel] and [Florian] Lipowitz are doing a great job, too. Everyone’s riding faster so even if Jonas is at his best-ever level it might not be enough because everyone is progressing so fast.”Teenage sensation Paul Seixas is an additional factor for Vingegaard and Pogačar to contend with in this year’s Tour (JASPER JACOBS / Belga / AFP via Getty Images)It was only two springs ago that Vingegaard, along with other key riders like Evenepoel, crashed hard at the Itzulia Basque Country, breaking his sternum, several ribs and a collarbone, as well as puncturing both of his lungs. He later said that he feared he was going to die in the accident.He made a remarkable recovery to finish second at that summer’s Tour, and then won 2025’s Vuelta after again placing second in the Tour. But all along Visma’s medical and coaching staff were preaching that Vingegaard wouldn’t fully recover until the 2026 season.