Will Visma-Lease a Bike stumble into another quagmire of egos and ambitions in a repeat of the 2023 Vuelta a España’s infamous civil war on wheels?
Or will the team rally behind Jonas Vingegaard right from the start and deliver red without controversy?
Vingegaard arrives at Saturday’s start of the Vuelta as the undisputed five-star favorite.
With none of the Big 4 rivals on the Torino start line — no Pogačar, no Evenepoel, no Roglič — the Dane stands alone as the rider to beat.
UAE perhaps packs the stiffest competition, but Juan Ayuso and João Almeida are still unproven over three weeks. Neither has yet demonstrated the horsepower to unseat a double Tour de France winner.
This is his Vuelta to lose.
Yet will Vingegaard’s most dangerous enemies come from within?
Could the Vuelta unravel into the intra-squad squabbles that saw teammates attacking each other up the Angliru all over again?
Not that the 2023 outcome was bad by any stretch. Visma capped its magical season with an unprecedented grand tour sweep with a podium stomp in Madrid.
That’s the kind of finale sports managers and team owners dream about.
But the way it unraveled — from the muddled GC hierarchy and the sight of Roglič and Vingegaard launching attacks against their teammate Sepp Kuss in red — turned what should have been a victory parade into one of cycling’s biggest soap operas.
As Visma lines up again this weekend with the deepest and strongest team in the race, the echoes of 2023 are inevitable.
Yet a replay of the 2023 circus is almost certainly not going to happen. Here’s why:
Setting GC hierarchy early
If Visma learned something from 2023, it’s to set the GC hierarchy early, or risk chaos.
Two years ago, the team rolled into the Vuelta overflowing with confidence after sweeping the Giro and Tour. The mood was almost like a cycling training camp: let’s race, let’s have fun, let’s see who’s strongest!
The result was a tactical face-palm that nearly imploded the team.
One can imagine that Visma will bring a carved-in-stone strategy right from the beginning of this Vuelta. The last thing it wants is a repeat of 2023, when Primož Roglič and Vingegaard were battling for supremacy as soon as the flag dropped.
The fact that Kuss won America’s first elite men’s grand tour win in a decade was as big of a surprise to everyone inside the bus as it was to fans watching from the roadside and on TV, but that scenario was of their own doing.
Kuss was cut loose early at the end of the first week to chase a stage win and to put pressure on GC rivals. That was fine, until the Colorado climber hung on longer than anyone expected.
Ciao Vuelta ❤️
Back in Torino again. Meet our squad and read the preview: https://t.co/Ut2LBpy5Ny pic.twitter.com/OPQnBAhTfy
— Team Visma | Lease a Bike (@vismaleaseabike) August 18, 2025
That’s when the fireworks started. And by the time things came to an embarrassing intrasquad shootout on the Angliru, the race had slipped into a full-blown family feud.
Not that anyone didn’t love seeing Kuss bring home the flowers, but Visma brass won’t want to replay that drama again.
Rather than race with a loosey-goosey, let’s have fun and blow up the race attitude; the team is expected to race with a more disciplined and strategic approach.
Expect 2025 to see the team marching in lock step behind Vingegaard firmly installed as the leader of the band right from stage 1.
Pressure to set tone early
There will be pressure for the Killer Bees to get this one right, and that means winning the Vuelta with Vingegaard.
That wasn’t the case in 2023, when the team seemed untouchable and was at the height of its powers. That Vuelta, even with the Kuss-induced drama, almost felt like a victory lap. The team was so deep that they were playing hot potato with the red leader’s jersey.
But 2025 is different. The Killer Bees need to win this Vuelta.
Since that magical 2023 season, Visma and Vingegaard have struggled to keep pace with Tadej Pogačar at the Tour de France.
UAE Emirates-XRG is now doing the thrashing, and things are getting crowded at the top, especially with ascendant Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe feeling bullish with the arrival of Remco Evenepoel alongside Roglič and breakout star Florian Lipowitz for 2026.
Visma will be racing this month to remind all the armchair sport directors that they’re still at the top of the peloton’s power charts.
UAE vs Visma at La Vuelta
How UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Team Visma | Lease a Bike – who finished 1st and 2nd on GC at both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France – compare for the Vuelta a Espãna, which starts on Saturday.
Sprint Cycling | Team Visma | Lease a Bike pic.twitter.com/S0X9c9Kfjr
— Velon CC (@VelonCC) August 18, 2025
The “yellow jackets” got it right with the audacious Finestre ambush in May’s Giro d’Italia thanks to Simon Yates. It’s that style of racing the team will need to bring to the Vuelta.
But the team is under pressure to bring home this Vuelta with Vingegaard, their top GC man and franchise player. This Vuelta is about intent and execution.
The Dane probably should have and could have won in 2023, but he played the loyal teammate to pay back fan-favorite Kuss in the later stages as the race was slipping into chaos.
It was Roglič who felt left to play the villain.
But Roglič was only playing by the rules the team set at the start of letting the best rider win, so he kept pressing for his own shot at glory. When the team finally forced him to accept Kuss as the winner, that ultimately set the stage for him to join Red Bull.
Visma management will be playing all of its strategic cards to avoid a repeat of the Angliru dumpster fire of 2023 that turned into a PR nightmare and social media fiasco.
None of those circumstances should exist coming into this year’s Vuelta, unless they create them again.
The pressure to win, however, is even bigger.
Kuss and Jorgenson hold the keys
Sepp Kuss is back as Visma’s ever-reliable mountain lieutenant, but there’s a new wrinkle with the emergence of rising star Matteo Jorgenson.
Kuss looks close to being back at his best, though perhaps not quite at the level he showed in 2022 and 2023, when he was a constant stage-hunting threat and undisputedly the finest climbing domestique in the peloton.
Still, the Durango Kid is a master of riding back-to-back grand tours and will arrive with the experience and resilience to be the last man for Vingegaard in the high mountains.
Kuss doesn’t like the limelight or pressure that comes with leadership, so he’s just fine riding for the Dane.
Jorgenson could be this Vuelta’s wild card.
Illness derailed his Tour de France, but the 26-year-old is eager for redemption in Spain.
This Vuelta, less punishing than recent editions and without Pogačar or other GC favorites, could provide an ideal proving ground for him to test his GC credentials.
The American has made no secret that he believes he can develop into a grand tour contender, and a podium tilt here would be the clearest confirmation yet.
Almost 1.800 km in .
In the ❤️ for a lifetime. pic.twitter.com/6lR1dAMcuW
— Team Visma | Lease a Bike (@vismaleaseabike) September 17, 2023
The balancing act for Visma will be in how they can best use their firepower.
Give Jorgenson too much leash too early, as the team did with Kuss in 2023, and they risk setting their own trap again.
Of course, Jorgenson would never openly attack Vingegaard. It’s the sport directors who ultimately call the tactical shots.
Handled right, the duo of Kuss and Jorgo should provide Vingegaard with the red-carpet leadout he needs to dominate and win this Vuelta.
Handled wrong, and cycling ghosts from 2023 could come creeping back.
Vingegaard needs to take charge
Of course, Vingegaard has to deliver his end of the bargain.
The way the 2025 course is stacked up, it’s very likely that an in-form Vingegaard could be in red by the end of the first week. That would impose order both in the peloton and inside the Visma bus.
With the GC nailed down, lieutenants like Kuss, Jorgenson, or even a workhorse opportunist such as Victor Campenaerts can be let off the leash to chase stage wins. No stress.
More than anything, Visma wants to win this Vuelta without drama.
The Grand Tour results of the big #LaVuelta25 favourites
Jonas Vingegaard
Joao Almeida
Juan Ayuso pic.twitter.com/YbFJ6jKeI7— Domestique (@Domestique___) August 19, 2025
They want to win it with Vingegaard, in control from start to finish, to prove that he’s still a grand tour force.
A big win would also silence the chatter in Denmark that he is somehow underappreciated or doesn’t get the support he needs within the team hierarchy. A dominant performance here would kill that narrative for good.
The dream Vuelta? Vingegaard in red, Jorgenson on the podium, Kuss pocketing a mountain stage. That’s the kind of spread-the-wealth finish-line shot that keeps leaders, lieutenants, and sponsors smiling all winter long.
The nightmare? Vingegaard stutters, and another Angliru-style intrateam shootout unfolds in front of millions of viewers across the globe.