{"id":682297,"date":"2026-07-09T12:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T12:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/682297\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T12:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T12:46:15","slug":"the-giro-tour-double-is-the-toughest-challenge-in-bike-racing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/682297\/","title":{"rendered":"The Giro-Tour double is the toughest challenge in bike racing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

Tour de France<\/a><\/p>\n

Until Tadej Poga\u010dar, no rider in 25 years had won both Grand Tours in a season; Jonas Vingegaard has his sights set on the elusive feat, but he’ll have to go through his rival.<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/p>\n

Cor Vos<\/p>\n

In 2024, with his talent for making record-breaking performances look routine, Tadej Poga\u010dar pulled off yet another feat. By winning the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in the same season, Tadej joined a club undisturbed since 1998, when Marco Pantani last donned pink and yellow in the same year. Before Pantani, only six other men in history had done \u201cthe double,\u201d and aside from Poga\u010dar\u2019s incredible performance, a winning streak like that was generally seen as impossible in the modern era. And yet, Jonas Vingegaard is now attempting to do the same, and his attempt will undergo a critical challenge Thursday on stage 6 of the Tour.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar’s 2024 final podiums at the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France<\/p>\n

We all know a Grand Tour double is a tremendous physiological feat; just three men’s cyclists ever have won the Tour and Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a in the same season (this number is probably artificially low because until 1995 the Vuelta was held in spring, which made it impossible to ride the Giro). But \u2013 pre-Poga\u010dar and Vingegaard, anyway \u2013\u00a0any number of riders won Grand Tours. Why does it take such a super-talent to pull off back-to-back titles? Is there anything about modern training and racing that is making it more possible \u2013\u00a0beyond Tadej\u2019s exceptional abilities? And, ultimately, after winning the Giro this year, will Vingegaard be fatigued and flat at the Tour or could we see his best form in years?<\/p>\n

Per Sebastian Weber, coach and founder of physiological analysis platform INSCYD, which is used by WorldTour teams, the key obstacle is about time and recovery. \u201cIt\u2019s not only about doing two Grand Tours, it\u2019s also about how much time you have in between,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Haig of Netcompany-Ineos, who has raced in 16 Grand Tours including several back-to-back campaigns, knows what those challenges look like from a rider\u2019s perspective. “You’re away for a total of four weeks by the time you arrive a little bit earlier, you do all the [team] presentation and everything, you live this kind of weird life being looked after,” he said, noting that the shift between being at a Grand Tour and being home can be particularly difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n Tour de France<\/a>
\n Giro d’Italia<\/a>
\n Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a>
\n Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>
\n Jack Haig<\/a>
\n Performance<\/a>
\n News & Racing<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tour de France Until Tadej Poga\u010dar, no rider in 25 years had won both Grand Tours in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-682297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}