Tour de France favourites and rivals Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard have stepped up their preparations for the July Grand Tour, with the pair both heading to high altitude in Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountain range this week.
Footage posted on social media showed the winners of the past five Tours training separately but in the same region of southern Spain. For at least the next two weeks, the two rivals will perhaps cross paths in the ski resort and be able to see each other train, while staying at a distance in different apartments with their teams.
One video showed reigning champion Pogačar racing alone up a 6% gradient at 2,200 metres of altitude, while another video showed 2022 and 2023 winner Vingegaard riding at altitude alongside a Visma-Lease A Bike teammate.
The duo are both spending time at altitude before they return to racing in June for their final Tour de France preparation race, the Critérium du Dauphiné (June 8-15).
So far in 2025, Vingegaard has taken on a very limited racing schedule, with only a successful trip to the Volta ao Algarve and a crash-abridged Paris-Nice on his calendar. His time in France was cut short by a fall and subsequent concussion, with the injury also seeing him miss a scheduled trip to the Volta a Catalunya in March.
He is training at altitude alongside several teammates, including Matteo Jorgenson, Sepp Kuss, Victor Campenaerts, and Tiesj Benoot.
Pogačar, meanwhile, has enjoyed a dominant start to his campaign, taking seven wins in 14 race days to date, including the UAE Tour, Strade Bianche, Tour of Flanders, La Flèche Wallonne, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
He has UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Julius Johansen for company in Spain. It’s a busy time for training camps in Sierra Nevada at the moment, with Velofacts compiling a list of teams and riders currently in the area.
Along with Vingegaard and Pogačar, TotalEnergies (including Matthieu Burgaudea and Matteo Vercher), EF Education-EasyPost (including Michael Valgren, Ben Healy, and Neilson Powless), and Lidl-Trek (Mattias Skjelmose and Toms Skujinš) are also in Sierra Nevada.
Of the other favourites for the Tour, Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) is currently racing the Giro d’Italia, where he lies second overall after four days of racing, while Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) recently announced the start of his Tour preparation with a 69km training ride in Belgium. He is expected to head to altitude very soon.
For many teams, the altitude camps are an important moment on the road to the Tour de France. They will then ride the Critérium du Dauphiné or the Tour de Suisse, in June before the big shown down in July.
Several teams and riders – including the big two – will head back to altitude after the Critérium du Dauphiné to put the final touches on their preparation for the Tour before the Grand Départ in Lille on Saturday July 5.
Vingegaard and Visma will head to Tignes in the French Alps for that final spell at altitude, while UAE have yet to confirm Pogačar’s plans. Last year, he headed to Isola 2000 in the Italian Alps before heading to the Tour.
The Tour de France will begin in 53 days but the hard work and vital training has already begun.
