Vingegaard’s 2026 ended on an operating table after a crash on stage 15 of the Tour de France, where he was lying second behind Pogacar, 4:30 down on the Slovenian, when he hit the deck and fractured his collarbone.

The Dane will not race again this year, Visma confirmed in mid-August, and the recovery has pushed every meaningful question into the winter.

“The focus is on preparing optimally for the goals of the 2027 season,” Vingegaard said in that team statement.

That leaves team boss Richard Plugge planning around a Tour effort he never got to see through.

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“To do a proper analysis, it’s more or less difficult because we missed, let’s say, from stage 15 onwards, we missed some data,” Plugge told Domestique Cycling in October.

The 2027 Tour de France route was presented in Paris in October, with 71 kilometres of individual time trialling, six mountain stages and just three summit finishes. Plugge did not pretend the reduced mountain inventory makes the choice easier.

The races still missing from his record

Vingegaard himself opened the door before the crash. Speaking to Danish outlet Feltet during the Tour of Denmark, in comments carried by Domestique Cycling, he leaned on what he has not yet won.

“There are still many races I haven’t won. That is also something that motivates me.”

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The 2026 season brought him the Giro d’Italia, Paris-Nice and Volta a Catalunya, leaving the Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Suisse as the only major week-long stage races still missing from his record. The scheduling is awkward, with Romandie falling in his pre-Tour taper window and Suisse clashing with his usual Dauphiné block, but the appetite is there.

Lund’s classics calendar

The proposal to send Vingegaard somewhere he has barely raced at all comes from outside the team. Anders Lund, a former Danish national coach now working as a cycling analyst for Eurosport, has mapped out a full one-day programme for 2027: Strade Bianche in March, the Ardennes trio of Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, the World Championships in Haute-Savoie, France, and Il Lombardia later in the year.

“He needs to start racing one-day races,” Lund said on Eurosport, arguing that occasional appearances will not teach the discipline.

Vingegaard has sometimes framed it the same way.

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“I’d really like to excel in the Classics. But I haven’t figured out how to perform in those kinds of races yet,” he told Domestique Cycling a year ago.

He has only one one-day professional victory, the 2022 Drôme Classic, and finished neither the Clásica San Sebastián in 2024 nor the European Championships in 2025.

Tour decision expected in the coming weeks

Plugge has made clear the Tour will not slip down the priority list. Whether Vingegaard again doubles up with the Giro, or sacrifices the Giro load for a serious run at the spring classics, is the question Visma is still working through.

“It’s something we will decide in the coming weeks, together,” Plugge said.

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Vingegaard’s full programme for 2027 is expected to be set during the coming winter, with Marc Reef confirming on the team site that the plan will be built together with the rider around “the right training build-up and goals for the new year.”

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