2027 World Championships: Will Jonas Vingegaard finally win a World Championship?

​It was the afternoon when the 2023 Tour de France was decided. In the time trial to Combloux, Jonas Vingegaard shot up the Côte de Domancy as if someone had switched off gravity for him. In the end, he had taken 1 minute 38 seconds off Tadej Pogačar on the sole time trial stage; on the following day in the Alps, he extended his lead to over seven minutes. Four years later, cycling returns to this very same climb. Not for a stage, but for the most important one-day race of the year: at the 2027 World Championships in Haute-Savoie, the battle for the rainbow jersey will be decided on the Côte de Domancy. And suddenly a question arises that, until now, one hardly ever had to ask about Vingegaard: is this finally the World Championships for him?

Jonas Vingegaard: A stage racer with no World Championship history

If you look through Vingegaard’s list of achievements, you’ll find almost nothing but stage races. In 2026 alone, he won Paris–Nice, the Volta a Catalunya and the Giro d’Italia, meaning he has now claimed victories in all three Grand Tours. When it comes to one-day races, however, his record is largely barren, and even more so at World Championships: his only World Championship appearance was in 2018 as an U23 rider, whilst his return to the Danish national jersey at the 2025 European Championships ended without him finishing the race. There, he was dropped early on and withdrew from the race.

Yet his World Championships debut had been within his grasp on two previous occasions. In 2025, his first World Championships appearance was actually considered a certainty, before he pulled out just a few hours before the Vuelta team presentation. In 2026, it was set to be Montréal, until Jonas Vingegaard broke his collarbone in a crash on the 15th stage of the Tour de France. Visma declared his season over shortly afterwards, as he was still suffering from the after-effects of the injury. If he lines up at the start in Sallanches in August 2027, Vingegaard will be 30 years old and still waiting for his first elite World Championships start.

A course tailor-made for Jonas Vingegaard

What might appeal to him this time, is the World Championships course. In 2027, all road races will use the same 13.3-kilometre circuit around Sallanches and Domancy, the centrepiece of which is the Côte de Domancy: 2.5 kilometres long, with an average gradient of 9.4 per cent and sections reaching up to 16 per cent. Each lap involves a 285-metre climb. The elite men must complete the circuit twenty times, totalling 265 kilometres and 5,700 metres of elevation gain – more than in any other men’s World Championship road race this century. It even surpasses the 2025 World Mountain Bike Championships in Kigali.

The town certainly has no shortage of history. It was on this very climb that Bernard Hinault won the rainbow jersey in 1980, and the 2027 route follows the same course at Hinault’s request; furthermore, Eddy Merckx became amateur world champion in Sallanches in 1964.

A plan that has been taking shape for years

The Danish national coach makes no secret of the fact that the 2027 World Championships are on Vingegaard’s mind. Michael Mørkøv told Eurosport Denmark that he had spoken to Jonas Vingegaard about it years ago, once it had been confirmed where the World Championships would take place. For Mørkøv, Sallanches could be the World Championships of this decade that best suit climbers and a rider like Vingegaard. And he goes even further: his clear impression is that Vingegaard would very much like to ride for the national team and take part in a World Championships, provided it fits in with his other commitments.

Dress rehearsal in July

The Tour offers a taste of things to come. On 13 July, the 10th stage covers 171 kilometres from Annecy to Sallanches; the Côte de Domancy is one of six tough climbs on the day (You can read about the full route of the 2027 Tour de France here). For Jonas Vingegaard, this is a home race on familiar ground; for Pogačar, however, it is also an opportunity for revenge.

The calendar is working in the Dane’s favour. The men’s elite race takes place on 29 August, just one month after the Tour de France. Anyone who comes out of the Grande Boucle in top form will only need to maintain it for a few weeks. After that, however, the Vuelta is already looming: there are only six days between the World Road Race Championships and the start of the Vuelta in Santiago de Compostela. Tadej Pogačar has already announced his intention to ride the Tour of Spain.

​A tour that suits him less

The fact that Sallanches could be more than just a side event for Vingegaard in 2027 is also down to the Tour itself. The route for the Grande Boucle, unveiled on 22 October, is not a climbers’ course. There are just two mountain finishes on the programme, at the Grand Colombier and the Col du Portet. The first week belongs to the puncheurs and sprinters; the high-mountain stage doesn’t come until the ninth day. In contrast, ASO has spared the time trials from cutbacks: with 71 kilometres against the clock, spread over two days, there are more time trial kilometres than there have been since 2012, when Bradley Wiggins won the Tour.

Of course, there are also tough mountain stages, such as the Pyrenees queen stage to Portet with 5,400 metres of climbing, or the Alpine stage to Les Saisies. However, for a rider whose strength lies in a succession of long, gruelling high-mountain stages, this route simply offers fewer opportunities to gain time. Remco Evenepoel is likely to benefit most, as he can play his strongest cards in the flat time trials to Chambord and in Toulouse. For Vingegaard, who has mostly finished behind Pogačar in recent years anyway, this does little to increase the likelihood of a third Tour victory. This makes a finish where the route is entirely in his favour all the more important.

Jonas Vingegaard’s problem is called Pogačar

This is precisely the plan being drawn up by the man against whom Vingegaard has been measured for years. Pogačar has set himself three major goals for 2027: the Tour, the Vuelta and the World Championships in France. The Slovenian, world champion in 2024 and 2025, missed out on Montréal following his crash in the Vuelta; Sallanches could be the ideal opportunity for him to reclaim the rainbow jersey.

And here lies the catch with this supposedly dream World Championships route. Domancy is not an Alpine pass where Jonas Vingegaard can play to his strengths over 40 or 50 minutes. It is a gruelling, seven-minute-long climb – a challenge more reminiscent of Liège or Lombardy than of Hautacam. On such climbs, Pogačar has been virtually unbeatable of late. The sheer scale of the challenge speaks against him: 20 climbs and 5,700 metres of elevation gain turn the race into a war of attrition, in which it is not the most explosive rider who wins, but the one who can still put out the same watts on lap 18 as on lap 3. That is precisely Vingegaard’s speciality. His victories in the Tour, the Vuelta and the Giro have always been based on long, gruelling mountain stages.

Now or never?

Perhaps that is the real point: it is not just a question of whether Vingegaard can win in Sallanches, but whether he will even make a serious attempt. He is unlikely to stand much of a chance at the subsequent flat World Championships in Abu Dhabi and Denmark. The 2027 World Championships are therefore not only the best opportunity of his career, they could also be his last realistic one. For a rider who has long shunned one-day races, winning the rainbow jersey on Hinault’s home mountain would be the ultimate response to all those who consider him purely a stage racer.