Jonas Vingegaard’s bid to complete a rare Grand Tour grand slam by winning the 2026 Giro d’Italia begins in Bulgaria on Friday when the double Tour de France winner makes his debut in the Italian race.

Vingegaard, the winner of the 2022 and 2023 Tours de France, has been eclipsed by the achievements of Tadej Pogacar – winner this season of nine races in 11 days of racing – but is the outstanding favourite for victory in Rome on 31 May.

That is largely because Pogacar is absent. In fact, the Dane will be competing in something of a void, as the world’s best riders skip the Giro to prioritise on the all-consuming Tour de France.

Success in his first Giro will make Vingegaard the eighth rider in history to win all three Grand Tours, but the absence of Pogacar, both from last year’s Vuelta field and this spring’s Giro peloton, is likely to overshadow the achievement.

Vingegaard will race against a field lacking not only the seemingly unstoppable Slovenian, but also Remco Evenepoel, the double Olympic champion, and the prodigious French teenager Paul Seixas, who has announced that his priority will be starting his first Tour de France in July, in which he will be the youngest debutant in 89 years.

Other notable absentees from the Giro include Tom Pidcock, third to Vingegaard in the 2025 Vuelta a España, fast-developing German rider Florian Lipowitz, a podium finisher last July in Paris and Pogacar’s teammate Isaac del Toro.

For Vingegaard, once seen as Pogacar’s closest rival, the Giro is also a chance to reassert himself. At 29, he is now in danger of being usurped by Seixas, a rider 10 years younger who has already shown himself capable of following the Slovenian’s vicious accelerations.

But there are signs that the Dane, derailed by a life-threatening crash in 2024, is back to his best. After winning the troubled 2025 Vuelta, which was disrupted by serial pro-Palestine protests, he won France’s second-biggest stage race, Paris-Nice, and also the Volta a Catalunya, this spring.

Given the list of absentees from the Giro’s start list, Vingegaard’s Visma Lease-a-Bike team might ask if not now, then when, but making any assumptions of the Giro underestimates the capricious nature and volatility of a race renowned for freak accidents and extreme weather.

This is the first Giro Grande Partenza to take place in Bulgaria, and the 15th foreign start in 109 editions of the corsa rosa, but the grand plan has been blighted by political unrest in the host nation and disputes over travelling costs with the leading teams.

After three days of racing in Bulgaria, the convoy will head to the foot of Italy and then turn north, through Calabria and Campania, before the first major mountain finish at Blockhaus, on stage seven.

The 2026 Giro takes in almost 49,000 metres of climbing and five summit finishes, which, given Vingegaard’s capabilities, looks ideally suited to his hopes of success. There is one individual time trial, midway through the race, but it is flat and, despite being more than 40km long, should not trouble him.

If the Dane will be relying on his recent good form, Grand Tour experience and climbing skills, then Jim Ratcliffe’s recently rebooted Ineos team, which has relinquished sole naming rights to the Danish tech experts Netcompany in return for a €20m (£17.2m) a year boost, will be hoping to exploit AI in their pursuit of a first Grand Tour win since 2021.

For the new-look Netcompany Ineos, the Giro offers an opportunity to test two recent innovations – the integration of AI into their racing strategy and Geraint Thomas’s appointment as director of racing.

But Thomas, speaking at the Netcompany Ineos launch last week, believes there’s more to racing than software. “I think there’s still a need for the art,” he said. “Getting that clarity on all the data and stuff is one thing, but bike racing isn’t just about numbers. It’s about how you ride, the craft, and consistency.”

Wealthier than they were a month ago, the Welshman and his team are also now in a position to pursue Seixas, who, while only a teenager, has become the most coveted talent in the sport.

While the speculation over Seixas’s future continues, Netcompany Ineos will rely on the consistency of Egan Bernal, winner of the 2021 Giro and also the Tour de France, at just 22, in 2019. Like Vingegaard, the Colombian’s best career results came before a high-speed crash that left him in intensive care.

Bernal has not finished on the podium of a Grand Tour since making his comeback, and while he is a dependable performer in the high mountains, he is unlikely to challenge for the maglia rosa. This year’s Giro is Vingegaard’s race to lose.