Jonas Vingegaard’s overall victory in his maiden
Giro d’Italia which finished in Rome on Sunday opens the door to the world of
statistics.
He won five stages and become only the ninth rider
to win all three Grand Tours (eight men and one woman) during their careers: the
Tour de France, Vuelta des Espana and the Giro.
He joins the other cycling legends who have won all three: Jacques Anquetil,
Eddy Merckx, Felice Gimondi, Bernard Hinault, Alberto Contador, Vincenzo
Nibali, Chris Froome and Annemeik Van Vleuten.
In doing so
he moves one step ahead of his great rival, four times Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar who has yet to
do so and against whom, he will do battle in Le Tour in July. Vingegaard
finished second to Pogacar last year.
In addition
to the Giro last month, Vingegaard has now won the Tour de France twice (2022
and 2023), the Vuelta once in 2025.
Let us
indulge ourselves taking in a few more glorious race statistics which single
out great riders.
Merckx
remains the all-time champion, with 11 Grand Tour victories: Tour de France and
Giro five times each, and Vuelta once.
A few years ago
a renowned Belgian journalist said that the man to surpass Merckx’ was not yet
been born.
No one has
won all three Grand Tours in the same year.
But if we are
talking “threes”, the most esteemed road record of them all is probably “The
Triple Crown”. That is victory in the
Giro, Le Tour and the World professional road race championship in the same
year.
Only four
riders have done so in a single season: Merckx, Stephen Roche, Pogacar and
Annemeik Van Vleuten.
But you can
go dizzy with statistics, so we’ll settle for a few from the Giro just
finished.
Respect is
due the Portuguese star of the Giro, Afonso Eulalio, who took the race leader’s
pink jersey on the rain-lashed stage five joining the breakaway and gaining six
minutes on the favourites.
He held on
with style, holding on to the pink jersey, and defying the odds in the stage 10
time trial, conceding time to the Dane, seeing his lead diminish to 27-seconds
at the finish.
The time trial was won by Filippo Ganna.
Eulalio
finally gave best in the mountains on stage 14, when Vingegaard took the jersey
at last.
We could see
that Vingegaard was head and shoulders above the rest when he won the
penultimate stage alone, extending his
overall winning margin to five minutes 33 seconds on Felix Gall of Austria. Aussie
Jai Hindley was third overall a further 63 seconds behind.
Of his
upcoming scrap with Pogacar in July’s Tour de France, Vingegaard at the Rome
finish said it would depend on how he came out of the Giro. If he was tired, he
wouldn’t expect to mount a challenge to Pogacar. Then added, tellingly: “I am
not tired.”
