No Dane has ever won the Vuelta and Jonas Vingegaard could be the first to do so. Winning the Vuelta to enter the history books is the intention of the Danish rider who will try to conquer the Roja, the jersey symbolizing the Vuelta, which has only been worn once by a Danish rider, when Jakob Fuglsang wore it after the inaugural team time trial in 2011.

This could be Vingegaard's breakthrough year, as after his second place at the Tour de France, he realized there's room for many more successes in his palmares. The Dane is participating in his third edition of the Spanish stage race and is the big favorite for the overall victory.

For the 90th anniversary of La Vuelta, the legendary Alto de l'Angliru returns, which Vingegaard has already climbed twice. The Dane will face this climb on September 5th, during the thirteenth stage. The giant of the Asturias, with a maximum gradient approaching 20%, will be tackled at the end of the day, after covering 203 kilometers starting from Cabezon de la Sal.

The first time Vingegaard climbed the Angliru was as a teammate of Primoz Roglic in 2020 and then in 2023, when the Dutch team conquered the three grand tours in the same season, an event never before seen in cycling history. Sepp Kuss won La Vuelta after Roglic had won the Giro d'Italia and Vingegaard had secured his second Tour de France. Since 2017, when Alberto Contador crowned his magnificent career winning, as in 2008, at Alto de l'Angliru, La Vuelta has faced the giant of the Asturias twice, with its 12.3 km at 10.1% and the famous Cueña les Cabres section at 23.5%, in 2020 and 2023. This corresponds to Jonas Vingegaard's two participations in the Spanish grand tour.

Vingegaard's first time was on November 1st, the year of the pandemic. The slender Dane was 23 years old, running his first grand tour, in service of Primoz Roglic. He had only one professional victory to his name (a stage of the 2019 Tour of Poland). Roglic, the defending champion, was defending the Roja against Richard Carapaz. The Slovenian lost the red jersey on the Angliru but managed to limit the damage thanks to the help of his teammates Robert Gesink and Sepp Kuss. But it was particularly Vingegaard's work that limited the damage that difficult day in the Asturias. It was the twelfth stage and Vingegaard himself dragged his captain up the Angliru climb. 3.5 km from the summit, the Dane dropped back, leaving Kuss to complete the task, which was enough for Roglic to definitively reclaim the race lead the next day in the time trial to Mirador deÉzaro.

At the end of the stage, Vingegaard, who was a complete unknown, was besieged by media wanting to know everything about that small rider. "I'm just trying to help Primoz as much as possible. I think I surprised the public, but also myself and the team here in Spain," Vingegaard had said. "I know I'm at a high level when I'm at my best, but I don't think I've reached my limits at the Vuelta yet." Vingegaard's effort did not go unnoticed, and Roglic asked the team to replace Tom Dumoulin with the small Dane in the Tour de France 2021 squad. The rest is history, and Roglic's two crashes in that Tour de France gave Vingegaard the opportunity to become the lead captain of Jumbo-Visma.

For the fifth consecutive time, the Dane finished on the Tour de France podium this year, again in second place behind Tadej Pogacar, but for several years he has been stating that the race for the Yellow Jersey is not the only goal of his career. "I want to win the Vuelta, I want to win the Vuelta one day". From these words, repeated in recent weeks, one understands how important this race is for the Dane, who has already won the Itzulia, the Basque Country, and twice O Gran Camiño in Spain.

Two years ago, Vingegaard won at Col du Tourmalet (13th stage) and at Bejes (16th stage) on the eve of the Angliru. At the time, he was second in the general classification, 29'' behind his teammate Kuss, while Roglic was 1'33'' back. In the Jumbo-Visma group, the idea was still that the strongest of the three would win La Vuelta. At the top of the Angliru, Roglic and Vingegaard crossed the line first, followed by Kuss at 19'', but the impression everyone had that day was that the two were racing against each other. "None of us liked how we raced," Vingegaard had said after that day. "The team management didn't like it either, and we understood that we needed to stop, that we couldn't race against each other within the team. That's what I wanted to do on the second rest day. I was third and happy to be in that position. I had asked not to attack each other and to fight only against our opponents. Fortunately, after the Angliru, the management told us: it's over, and we must maintain the classification as it is. We will never know who of the three was the strongest in that Vuelta."

Today the situation is completely different, and Jonas Vingegaard will race to win his first Vuelta a España.