Jonas Vingegaard rode into Rome on Sunday wearing the pink jersey to complete one of road cycling's most celebrated achievements, becoming the only active rider — and just the eighth in history — to have won all three Grand Tours. The 29-year-old Dane, who rides for the Dutch-registered Visma–Lease a Bike team, added the Giro d'Italia to his Tour de France titles in 2022 and 2023 and his Vuelta a España victory in 2025, joining an exclusive club that includes Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Alberto Contador, Vincenzo Nibali, and Chris Froome. "Winning all three is very special for me — it's difficult to find the words to describe it," Vingegaard told Italian broadcaster RAI after arriving in the Italian capital. He was visibly moved as his wife and two children, dressed in pink, greeted him at the finish line.

Vingegaard's dominance throughout the three-week race was near-total. He claimed five stage victories and finished with a commanding margin of five minutes and 22 seconds over Austrian Felix Gall, who took second place — the first Grand Tour podium of his career — with Australian Jai Hindley third. Notably absent from the Giro was Vingegaard's chief rival, Slovenian superstar Tadej Pogačar, who has won the Tour de France four times and the Giro but has yet to claim the Vuelta. As Portuguese rider Afonso Eulalio — who won the white jersey for best young rider — observed mid-race, "the only one who can beat him is Pogačar, and Pogačar isn't here." One striking footnote: Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport calculated, based on TV footage, that Vingegaard's penultimate-stage solo climb to Piancavallo was three seconds faster than the legendary Marco Pantani on the same stretch on the same date in 1998.

The final stage into Rome, a largely ceremonial procession past the city's ancient monuments, ended in a bunch sprint won by Italian Jonathan Milan of Lidl-Trek, who had placed second, third, and fourth in earlier sprint finishes before finally claiming his first stage win of this edition. French sprinter Paul Magnier, who took three stage victories, claimed the points classification jersey. Dutch sprinter Dylan Groenewegen, competing with his debut team Unibet-Rose Rockets, finished fourth on the stage and left the Giro without a win, despite the result being a key team goal.

Attention now turns swiftly to the Tour de France, which begins on 4 July. Vingegaard said he plans a few days of rest with his family in Rome before returning to Denmark and completing altitude training at Tignes. He was careful to note he was not depleted: "If you come out completely exhausted and need two weeks of rest, it's not ideal. But I'm not completely exhausted." Visma team director Richard Plugge was characteristically blunt about his team's ambitions: "We are a yellow jersey organisation. Jonas is getting even stronger after this — we planned it so that he will be at his peak in the Tour de France." Pogačar, meanwhile, is set to ride the Tour de Suisse as his final preparation, setting the stage for what promises to be a defining rivalry when the sport's biggest race gets underway next month.