A season-delaying crash, a coach break-up and losing key teammates – Has Jonas Vingegaard's 2026 Tour de France bid gone wrong before it's even started?

Sometimes it feels like more things go wrong than right for Jonas Vingegaard. He's won two Tours de France, yes, but he's lost more than that, and aside from the grave misfortune of racing in the era of Tadej Pogačar, his bids to return to the top step in Paris have often been blighted by bad luck.

In 2024, he was the victim of an awful crash at Itzulia, suffering horrible injuries that he somehow recovered from in time to start, but he wasn't fully himself at that Tour. In 2025, a crash and concussion at Paris-Nice saw him injured again, and his preparation plans were disrupted once more.

Even when things did go right, and he won the Vuelta a España last year, there was some kind of cruel irony in the fact that he didn't get a real podium, nor even a proper arrival into Madrid, winning the most disrupted Grand Tour in recent memory.

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This year, I'm sure Vingegaard was wishing on New Year's Eve that 2026 would be different, that he'd at least get a shot at arriving to July unscathed. He planned to do things differently this time, skipping those races that had only caused him crashes and bad memories before, and opting to race his first Giro d'Italia to come into the Tour with Grand Tour racing in his legs, and maybe even a pink jersey. It worked for Pogačar in 2024, didn't it?

But, fast forward six weeks, and Vingegaard has seemingly encountered more problems than ever so far in 2026, not fewer.

One of his strongest teammates, Simon Yates, left the team abruptly and at the last minute after already being confirmed as part of the Dane's Tour team. Vital domestique Tiesj Benoot has departed to be a leader at Decathlon CMA CGM. His racing bodyguard and regular MVP Wout van Aert broke his ankle, messing up his own season start in a way that will probably bleed into Vingegaard's year, too.

Then Vingegaard himself crashed in a silly, controversial incident involving a fan getting too close on a training ride. As a result, after also being ill, he's had to skip his planned season-opener at the UAE Tour, meaning he will probably only do one race in Catalunya before the Giro, and has almost certainly had to make changes to his training.

Still with me? Because we're not done yet. As if all of that wasn't enough, on Monday, the news came that Vingegaard was losing yet another cog in his machine, with his long-term coach Tim Heemskerk leaving Visma-Lease a Bike, citing cryptic reasons about no longer being able to apply creativity to his work (the questions about Visma's rigidness aren't going away, then).

So it's been a pretty eventful 2026 for Vingegaard so far, and he hasn't even pinned on a number yet, whilst his main rivals are either winning every race they start, or enjoying straightforward training and teaming up with crypto companies. Will this jeopardise his Tour campaign before it can even really begin? Let's talk about it.

Simon Yates' untimely departure, Van Aert's ankle

In and of itself, losing Simon Yates shouldn't be an insurmountable problem – he's a good domestique and useful to have in the mountains, but not as essential to Vingegaard as some of his other allies – but the way it happened has somewhat screwed Visma. Making his decision a few days into January, the Dutch team had no real option to replace him, other than bringing a rider up from the development team or signing an out-of-contract rider – neither really pools full of luxury Grand Tour domestiques.

It was also noticeably disruptive to the team, messing up their plans but also opening them up to questioning about burnout and how they treat their riders. At training camp and beyond, the world was suddenly more interested in how they do things and treat people than Vingegaard's Giro participation, which I'm sure they thought would be the big news.

Whether it will be the difference between Vingegaard winning the Tour or not winning it, probably not, as team strength hasn't really been the decider between him and Pogačar in the last two years. But it is a loss. More than anything, it was probably useful to have a fellow Grand Tour winner by his side, someone who gets it in the final week of a race.

What could be more concerning, though, is Van Aert. Apparently, his recovery is going well, and the Tour is a long way away from when he hurt his ankle in January, but it could still all have a knock-on effect. He might take more risks in the Classics, or focus more of his energy there, or maybe still have lingering issues in July. Though not a climber, Van Aert is a key part of Vingegaard's support circle, both as a selfless domestique and a personal ally, so the Dane will really be hoping he's still at his best for the Tour.

Losing his long-time coach

Losing his coach is probably the bigger problem than any teammate changes – the Visma line-up changes every year, but Vingegaard has been working with Heemskerk for seven years, and together they've won three Grand Tours. Coaching relationships seem to work best when they're well established, when the coach knows the rider inside out, so that's not something that's going to be easy to replicate.

Visma are a team that insist on all coaching being done in-house, so Vingegaard can't keep Heemskerk as a trainer, and will only have limited say over who he works with next. The team certainly have plenty of talented coaches, and Vingegaard probably knows them all already, but it might take some time to build that personal connection.

The good thing is that Vingegaard probably planned out a lot of his training for this year already, and I doubt any new coach is going to come and rip the script up entirely – that would be risky – so the change might not be dramatic. And who knows, it could even be a good thing.

But more than the material impact of the loss itself, it's again just the feeling of destabilisation about Vingegaard, at a time when he was probably hoping for a smooth and consistent year with as few outside questions or dramas as possible. That's not what he's getting, and that intangible notion of instability could be the biggest problem.

When will he actually start racing, and is he injured?

All of this is, of course, very heavy speculation, because we haven't even seen Jonas Vingegaard in a race yet, and we won't for a while yet.

When he crashed in the incident with a fan in Malaga, the team said he wasn't seriously hurt, but then pulling him out of the UAE Tour raised questions as to whether he was actually more bashed up than first thought. The other reason for pulling out was illness, which the team haven't explained in any more detail, but could be anything from a couple of days missed training, or two weeks of disruption – we don't know yet.

As long as he doesn't have any broken bones or muscular injuries, we can probably assume that the crash isn't going to cause long-term issues on its own, but missing race days and warm-up events could prove costly. Going into the Giro with only one stage race in your legs is practically unheard of, even for a rider like Vingegaard who has always leant on a lighter racing schedule. It just leaves so little time to get into the rhythm of things or to iron out any problems.

It would be dramatic to say in mid-February that Jonas Vingegaard's Tour is already ruined, but it seems a fair assessment to say that it isn't great that we're only a few weeks into the season and his plan has already been knocked off course in multiple ways. Vingegaard is a rider who knows how to come back from adversity – although maybe only to second place, not winning – so you can never write him off, but he's going to need a few more things to start going right if he's really going to challenge for a pink or yellow jersey this summer.