The 2027 Road World Championships will not look like most editions. The elite men will race 20 laps of a hilly circuit around Sallanches, in the French Alps, covering around 266 kilometres with close to 5,700 metres of climbing, each lap crossing the Côte de Domancy at an average gradient of 9.4 per cent.
For Michael Mørkøv, the Danish national coach, that climbing count changes the calculation around his biggest name.
In comments carried by Domestique Cycling about Vingegaard’s 2027 plans, Mørkøv said he had not yet raised the subject directly with the two-time Tour de France winner, but that both men knew what was coming.
“I haven’t spoken to Jonas about it, other than to say that he, like me, knows there’s a World Championships next year in Sallanches, which may well turn out to be the World Championships of this decade best suited to climbers and to a rider like Jonas.”
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A nine-year gap at the Worlds
Vingegaard has never raced an elite men’s Road World Championship. His last appearance in the rainbow-jersey race was in 2018, in the under-23 category. He was selected for the elite road race at the 2026 edition in Montreal in late September, but withdrew in the lead-up after injuries from the Tour de France.
Those injuries came on stage 15 of the Tour, when Vingegaard crashed heavily and fractured his collarbone. He was second overall at the time, chasing Tadej Pogačar, who went on to a fifth Tour win.
A year earlier, Vingegaard had worn another national-team jersey at the 2025 European Championships in Guilherand-Granges, and abandoned with 86 kilometres remaining after being dropped on the Côte de Saint-Romain-de-Lerps. The race fell three weeks after his Vuelta a España win.
Mørkøv pushes back on the “no interest” narrative
Mørkøv has pushed back on the idea that the pattern reflects a lack of appetite for the rainbow jersey. In September 2026, before the Montreal withdrawal was confirmed, he told Domestique Cycling that the Dane had privately pushed for the Worlds.
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“He said early in the season that he wants to ride the Worlds. Unfortunately it did not happen.”
In his latest comments, Mørkøv said that assessment still held heading into a season Vingegaard will again build around a Tour de France title bid with Visma Lease a Bike.
“My very clear impression, just as it has been this year, is that Jonas is very keen to ride for the national team and is very keen to compete in the World Championships, but that this must, of course, fit in with his other commitments.”
A course modelled on 1980
Sallanches’s draw, for a rider with Vingegaard’s climbing numbers, lies in a course organisers have modelled on 1980, when Bernard Hinault took his only rainbow jersey on the same roads. Twenty passes of the Côte de Domancy, which touches gradients of 16 per cent, are expected to shake out the classics riders long before the finish.
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The 2027 World Championships are scheduled for late August and early September in Haute-Savoie.
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