Jonas Vingegaard will race just once more before his Tour de France rematch with Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), with the Dane likely to face Pogačar at the Critérium du Dauphiné in June beore their Grand Tour battle in July.
There had been reports of the Dane riding next week's Tour de Romandie, where Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) will be present, however, his original programme won't change and he will instead be heading to altitude in Sierra Nevada in May.
Vingegaard has not raced since suffering concussion at Paris-Nice in early March and has only raced for ten days so far in 2025. He has fully recovered and is now focusing on the Tour de France, with the goal to beat Pogačar as he did in 2022 and 2023.
"The focus is now fully on the Tour de France. The preparations for this race have truly begun," said Vingegaard via the team's website.
"I no longer have any issues from the concussion I sustained earlier, or any other physical problems. It was really unfortunate that I couldn’t finish Paris-Nice and also had to miss the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya. But now I’m training without any problems and will soon head to the altitude camp."
His first block in southern Spain will be followed by the Dauphiné from June 8, where he will clash with Pogačar and Evenepoel as the perfect warm-up for the Tour.
After that, he'll head to Tignes in the French Alps, for a final altitude camp with his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates.
"I’m really looking forward to racing again. I haven’t raced much this past year, so I’m eager to get started again," said the Dane.
"That goes for both the Critérium du Dauphiné and, of course, the Tour de France. But first, I’ll go to altitude training to get in shape. After that, I’ll try to win those races."
This is the second year in a row that Vingegaard's path to the Tour has been disrupted by injury, with his high-speed crash and subsequent recovery from last year's Itzulia Basque Country seeing him only confirmed as a Tour starter nine days before the Grand Départ.
Racing less should mitigate the risk of injury ahead of the Tour's start in Lille, but it also allows him to fine-tune his abilities before trying to reclaim the maillot jaune.
That has already started this with time on his time trial bike in Denmark.
"This week I was working in the wind tunnel in Aalborg," he said. "We made preparations for the Tour de France there, specifically focusing on my position on the bike. It’s important to work on that and to leave nothing to chance."
While the eventual winning gap for Pogačar exceeded six minutes at last season's Tour, Vingegaard lost 1:27 across the two races against the clock last season. With a mountain TT on offer on stage 13 to Peyragudes, Vingegaard will be hoping to dominate the time trial as he did at the 2023 Tour.
With Pogačar's dominance at last year's race, Vingegaard has ground to make up on the world champion, who is currently racing well at the Ardennes. owever, the Dane remains the most likely man to prevent him from claiming a fourth Tour de France title in July.
