- Following the 1966 Giro d’Italia and the 2009 Tour de France, Monaco is set to become the first venue to host the opening stage of each of the Grand Tours, with the inaugural time trial of La Vuelta on 22 August.
- Tadej Pogacar, now a five-time winner of the Tour de France, has announced his participation in this ultra-mountainous Grand Tour, which will finish at another prestigious location, the Alhambra in Granada, on 13 September.
Sixty years separate the opening stages of the Giro d’Italia and La Vuelta in Monaco, and in the meantime there was the 2009 Tour de France, meaning that this year the principality becomes the first venue to have hosted the start of all three Grand Tours. In 1966, the event surrounding the ‘Corsa Rosa’ – one year after its first start abroad (in the Republic of San Marino) – already carried historical significance: it was held to mark the centenary of Monte Carlo, the city-state’s most famous district, named in honour of Prince Charles III on 1 July 1866, shortly after the opening of Monaco’s casino, in front of which the 184 participants of La Vuelta 26 will set off for the time trial.
They were one hundred, divided into ten teams of ten, who signed in right in front of the palace on Wednesday 18 May 1966, in the presence of Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace. The previous evening, the Giro’s major innovation had been the teams’ presentation at night-time, between 9 pm and 10 pm, broadcast live on Eurovision, and the first Girofestival featuring singers, hosted by the famous Italian-American presenter Mike Bongiorno. The big star was Jacques Anquetil, seeking a third Giro victory but facing competition from a rising wave of young Italians; he ultimately finished third, behind Gianni Motta and Italo Zilioli. In fact, the Frenchman lost three minutes and a great deal of hope because of a careless spectator as early as in stage 1, held from Monaco to Diano Marina on the Italian Riviera.
A very eventful one, the 2009 Tour de France is remembered as the race that saw Alberto Contador definitively establish himself as a champion – a surprise winner of the race two years earlier and crowned in 2008 by his Giro-Vuelta double (a feat unmatched since the reform of the global cycling calendar in 1995). On 2 July 2009, two days before the inaugural time trial won by Fabian Cancellara, 14-year-old Victor Langellotti was one of the young cyclists from the principality’s schools to take to the podium at the teams’ presentation alongside the participants of the 96th Tour de France, and he had the honour of accompanying his idol, Alberto Contador, and his Astana team-mates.
Since then, Langellotti has become the third professional cyclist holding the Monegasque nationality (after Laurent Devalle and Albert Vigna in the 1920s) and the first of them to wear a distinctive jersey in a Grand Tour (the blue polka dot of King of the Mountains at La Vuelta 22). On 1st of August 2026, shortly before the Grand Départ of La Vuelta on home soil – whilst he had been sporting the colours of the Monaco time trial and road race champion since June – a mid-season transfer saw him join the team of his childhood dreams: XDS-Astana.
The equivalent of Anquetil at the start of the 1966 Giro d’Italia is Tadej Pogacar, who is now also a five-time winner of the Tour de France. The Slovenian, the current cycling megastar who lives in Monaco, will ride past his home during the 9.4km time trial on 22 August. He aims to cement his place in the history of his sport by winning La Vuelta for the first time – the Grand Tour where he demonstrated his capacities over three weeks of racing as a neo-pro in 2019 (finishing third overall and winning three stages). If he succeeds, on 13 September he will become the ninth rider to have won all three Grand Tours (following Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Contador, Vincenzo Nibali, Chris Froome and, since last May, Jonas Vingegaard).
Whilst the Grand Départ from Monaco is set to be historic, the grand finale in Granada is equally so, set against a backdrop as prestigious as that of the principality’s casino, in front of the Alhambra, a palatial complex that embodies nine centuries of Mediterranean civilisation. Between these two jewels, more than 58,000 metres of elevation gain await the riders, making La Vuelta 26 one of the most mountainous Grand Tours ever contested.
