On the 31st of May, Danish cycling star Jonas Vingegaard won the 2026 Giro d’Italia. The Team Visma-Lease a Bike rider, who will turn 30 in December, took glory by a huge margin of more than five and a half minutes, justifying his status as pre-race favourite. Over three weeks, he proved what everyone in cycling already knew – that he is the best in the world, aside from one man.
The Dane, one of the greatest climbers ever, is establishing a brilliant rivalry with cycling’s superstar and road-cycling number one, Slovenian ace Tadej Pogacar. Pogi is just 27 but has already done enough to earn comparison alongside the sport’s very best, such as Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault. Now, however, with this win in the Giro, Vingegaard has joined a very elite group of cycling’s greatest to have won all three of the sport’s Grand Tours. A group that does not, at least yet, include his rival Pogacar.
Dominant Performance Seals Place in History
The 109th Giro d’Italia began in Bulgaria on the 8th of May and ended in the Italian capital on the 31st of May. In between, we saw a masterclass from Vingegaard. He won the seventh and ninth stages but did not assume control of the GC until winning stage 14. That leg of the race was a brilliant team effort and Visma’s main man used the efforts of those around him before soloing to a big victory that earned him the pink jersey.
The fine ride to Pila meant he established a huge lead of two minutes and 26 seconds overall, and from there he never looked back. He won stage 16, extending his advantage to over four minutes. He then controlled the race beautifully before another superb ride saw him win stage 20 and take another minute over his main challenger, Austria’s Felix Gall, who eventually finished second.
Vingegaard had previously won the Tour de France in both 2022 and 2023. He finished second in 2021, 2024 and 2025, Pogacar the man to beat him on all three occasions. In 2023, Vingegaard was second in the Vuelta a España but won that race in 2025. His success in Italy means he is now just the eighth man to have completed the hat-trick of road cycling’s biggest stage races.
Merckx, Hinault and Froome First Among Equals
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No male cyclist has ever won all three of the sport’s Grand Tours in the same year, and the physical demands of such a challenge mean few try. However, three legends have held all three jerseys simultaneously, winning three in a row across two calendar years (note that the dates and order of the races have altered over the years).
Merckx has won more Grand Tours than anyone else; the Belgian’s record of 11 is something that Pogacar surely has in the back of his mind. The Cannibal was the dominant force in cycling between 1970 and 1974, winning nine of the 15 Tours over that period. That included the hat-trick of successive wins in the 1972 Giro and TdF and the 1973 Vuelta.
Second to Merckx in terms of career Grand Tour victories is French ace Hinault, with 10. That included three in a row in 1982 and 1983, with the Badger almost unbeatable in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
More recently, Chris Froome did not win quite as many races in total, his seven overall putting him joint fourth with several other legends. However, at his best, backed by an immensely powerful and innovative Team Sky, the Kenya-born Brit was sensational. Froome landed the Giro once and the Vuelta twice, but largely targeted the Tour, which he won four times. His mini “Grand Slam” of Grand Tours saw him win the Tour de France and Vuelta in 2017 before adding the 2018 Giro.
Vingegaard Joins Four Others
The current Giro champion joins four other cycling legends in having won all three at least once during their career. French rider Jacques Anquetil has won a record (shared) five Tours de France, plus two Giros and one success in Spain. His Grand Tour career spanned 1957, when he won his first TdF, to 1964, when he won his last. He doubled up in both 1963 and 1964, but the race schedule meant he didn’t ever hold all three simultaneously.
Spaniard Alberto Contador has also won all three big ones, boasting two wins in the Giro, two in the Tour and three in the Vuelta. He was the youngest man to complete the set, doing so at the age of just 25.
Vingegaard’s name now also sits alongside Felice Gimondi, with Italy’s Phoenix, or la Fenice, winning five Grand Tours between 1965 and 1976. His career at the top was longer than that of many rivals, and the 1965 Tour de France was his first big success. Two years later, he added the Giro, before claiming the Vuelta in 1968. He won the Giro again in 1969 before claiming his “home” race for the third time much later.
The only other person to have achieved this feat is another Italian, Vincenzo Nibali, who is the most recent rider, before Vingegaard, to do so. Nibali won four Grand Tours but spread them evenly, the Giro d’Italia the only one he won more than once.