THE MAKING OF JONAS VINGEGAARD

From Hantsholm harbour to the top step of the Tour de France podium, Tom Thewlis delves deep into what made the Danish sensation the dominant rider of today sport 

-  Tom Thewlis 

The northernmost corner of Denmark at the top of the Jutland Peninsula is an exposed, windswept and unforgiving landscape. Surrounding the harbours of the Thy district – which were once used as staging posts for Viking raids across Europe in the ninth and 10th centuries – are vast plains, without a knoll, hill or mountain in sight.

As the local people will tell you, to be a cyclist in the area means first knowing how to fight against the wind. Local riders also don’t have the luxury of long, warm drawn-out evenings that many of their contemporaries in Europe’s southern climes enjoy.

Perhaps that’s why a young Jonas Vingegaard – who’d go on to win the 2022 Tour de France – would often require a gentle nudge to get out of the house and out on the road with his friends, Karsten Mikkelsen and Jesper Odgaard, to train.

“They often had to go to his house, knock on his door and say, ‘Jonas! now we ride,’ but he couldn’t get his ass out riding,” says EF Education-EasyPost’s Michael Valgren, a childhood friend of Vingegaard. “If it wasn’t for Jesper, Karsten and all the other guys at the old club, I’m not sure he’d have been a pro.

Along with his parents they really took care of him.”

Cycling was just for recreation for young Vingegaard. Most sports are littered with stories of young athletes making grand statements of intent in the early days, announcing their talent from the rooftops. Not Jonas.

The friendly, polite and happy-go-lucky teenager from Thy never envisaged the sporting immortality that seemed almost inevitable once he arrived at Jumbo-Visma.