In the entire history of road cycling, only a handful of riders have etched their names in the annals of the three Grand Tours: the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and the Vuelta a España. This exclusive club has fewer than ten members, and each new entry reignites the debate about what distinguishes a great champion from an exceptional rider.
Vingegaard at the Giro: the latest entry into the circle of three Grand Tour winners
Jonas Vingegaard joined this select group by winning the Giro d’Italia, after already having won the Tour de France and the Vuelta. This victory, achieved in a context of a dense calendar and homogeneous competition, raises an interesting question about the comparability of feats across eras.
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Modern cycling imposes a higher volume of races on riders and a constant tactical pressure linked to real-time data, sophisticated team strategies, and the depth of the pelotons. Winning a single Grand Tour already represents the culmination of a season. Winning three during a career, across three different terrains, requires a versatility that very few riders possess.
Among the riders who have won the 3 Grand Tours, there are varied profiles: pure climbers, versatile time trialists, champions capable of dominating both time trials and high mountains. Vingegaard’s entry confirms that this type of record remains the ultimate criterion for evaluating the greatness of a general classification rider.
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Eddy Merckx and the record for Grand Tour victories
With eleven Grand Tour victories, Eddy Merckx overwhelmingly dominates this statistic. The Belgian rider won five Tours de France, five Giro d’Italia, and one Vuelta a España between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s.
This record remains out of reach for current riders, even the most dominant. The longevity at the highest level required for such an accumulation of victories is hardly reproducible in contemporary cycling, where top careers are often shorter.
Why this record withstands the test of time
Several factors explain the persistence of this record. The increasing specialization of riders leads many leaders to target one or two Grand Tours per season rather than all three. Teams manage the fatigue of their leaders over more segmented racing blocks.
In contrast, riders from the 1960s-1970s more easily tackled both the Giro and the Tour de France, sometimes separated by only a few weeks. Merckx himself managed the Giro-Tour double several times, a feat that has become extremely rare.
Giro-Tour de France double: an increasingly difficult achievement
The Giro-Tour double in the same year illustrates the growing difficulty of cumulative performances in Grand Tours. In recent history, only Marco Pantani in 1998 and Tadej Pogačar in 2024 have achieved this victorious sequence.
Pogačar, with his victories in the Tour de France and the Giro, now totals five Grand Tour victories, placing him alongside several other historical champions. At just twenty-six years old, his potential for progression in this ranking remains theoretically significant.
What the double reveals about physical demands
Completing two three-week races within a few weeks requires extremely fine management of recovery and physical condition. The available data do not allow for a direct comparison of the physiological load of a double in the 1990s and today, as training methods, nutrition, and equipment have evolved significantly.
What is documented is that most general classification riders choose not to aim for both events. The dominant trend is to build a season around a single major goal in July, sometimes complemented by the Vuelta at the end of summer.
Profiles of riders capable of winning the three Grand Tours
The winners of the three Grand Tours share some common characteristics, but their profiles are not interchangeable. Here are the qualities that consistently emerge:
- A capacity to perform in high mountains on long climbs, whether on the alpine slopes of the Tour, the ascents of the Dolomites in the Giro, or the dry climbs of the Vuelta
- A sufficient time trial level to avoid losing time to specialists, or even to create decisive gaps in time trial stages
- A resistance to fatigue accumulated over three weeks, which implies a recovery ability above the average of the professional peloton
- A team structured around the leader, capable of controlling the race on very different terrains from one Grand Tour to another
Recent multiple winners like Pogačar and Vingegaard are described as versatile riders capable of dominating both in the mountains and in time trials. This “complete” profile contrasts with some champions of the past, who were more marked by a specialty (Fausto Coppi as a climber, for example).
The question of the Vuelta as the third piece of the puzzle
The Vuelta a España occupies a special place in the construction of these records. Historically regarded as the least prestigious of the three Grand Tours, it has gained competitive level over the decades. For a rider aiming for the complete collection, the Vuelta often represents the last missing piece, attempted at the end of the season after a successful Tour de France.
Some analysts believe that doubles or triples in Grand Tours today achieve a level of difficulty superior to past performances with comparable raw records, due to the densification of the calendar and the homogeneity of the peloton. The field data diverge on this point: comparing eras separated by decades of technological and methodological progress remains a delicate exercise, which raw statistics alone cannot resolve.