Jonas Vingegaard’s story reads like a sports fairy tale—from the fish factory to Tour de France winner!
The Dane is now one of the best professional cyclists around. But what is Jonas Vingegaard like in private?
How working in a fish factory saved his cycling career, his wife Trine and daughter Frida, his salary at Jumbo-Visma and the doping rumors that surround him.
Jonas Vingegaard: Fish factory as the start of his cycling career
Jonas Vingegaard has always been considered a great cycling talent in Denmark. However, the teenager was not particularly disciplined or hard-working. “I wouldn’t say I was lazy. But I wasn’t always the type who trained the most,” he recalls today.
Christian Andersen, his former sports boss at the Danish team ColoQuick, remembers it a little more vividly: “He wasn’t well organized, had no routine, and got up late.”
The solution was as simple as it was unusual: Jonas Vingegaard should get a job.
That’s how the combination “Jonas Vingegaard & fish factory“ came about. At the age of 18, the slight Dane was working on the assembly line at the ”Crisfish” factory in Hanstholm. He skinned fish and then packed them into Styrofoam boxes.
For three years, Vingegaard worked on cod fillets every day from six in the morning until noon – later he also supervised the fish auction.
He only trained in the afternoon. This experience made him so strong later on. It was only through hard work in the fish factory that Vingegaard realized how important a cycling career was to him.
The fish factory saved his cycling career, so to speak – and he had dreamed of such a career since he was a little boy.
His journey to the yellow jersey of the Tour de France began in August 2007. His father Claus, a salmon farm designer, took 10-year-old Jonas to a stage of the Tour of Denmark, which started a few kilometers from their home. From that moment on, it was clear: Jonas Vingegaard wanted to become a professional cyclist!
Jonas Vingegaard profile: age, girlfriend, bike
The path to cycling…
Jonas Vingegaard trained regularly with his father. From the age of 15, Claus Vingegaard and Jonas traveled to France every year for a week to train in the Alps. Of course, little Jonas soon left his senior in the dust.
“He hit puberty relatively late, at 17. Before that, people at the club were always afraid he would be blown away,” recalls his father Claus Vingegaard, thinking back to the early days.
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At the age of 19, Vingegaard received an offer from the small ColoQuick team, which enjoys an excellent reputation for training talented riders.
Despite – or perhaps because of – his work in the fish factory, Jonas Vingegaard repeatedly made his mark in races, such as with his second place in the 2016 Tour of China, which, however, was not particularly competitive.
In 2018, Grischa Niermann, sporting director at Jumbo-Visma, finally got in touch with ColoQuick. He was actually interested in another rider at the time, but was advised to take a closer look at this Vingegaard.
In 2019, Jonas Vingegaard signed a professional contract with Jumbo-Visma and immediately handed in his notice at the fish factory. That was the beginning of Jonas Vingegaard’s professional career…
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How much does Jonas Vingegaard earn at Visma?
There is very little insight into the contracts between professional cyclists and their teams. However, given that Vingegaard is currently one of the biggest stars in the peloton thanks to his successes, this will also be reflected in his salary.
Jonas Vingegaard’s salary at Visma is around 4 million euros per year. This does not include bonuses and advertising income from personal sponsorship contracts.
By way of comparison, the salary of Tour de France rival Tadej Pogacar is estimated at around 8 million euros, which is twice as high.
The only salary higher than Vingegaard’s annual salary at Visma is that of Primoz Roglic, who is said to earn around 4.5 million euros per year with the Red Bull team.
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Jonas Vingegaard’s family: wife Trine & two children
Anyone who has followed the Tour de France in recent years knows that Jonas Vingegaard has a wife. Her name is Trine Marie.
Jonas Vingegaard and Trine Marie have a daughter named Frida, who was born in September 2020.
Trine Marie is not only Jonas Vingegaard’s wife, but also his manager. The Danish woman, who is nine years older and comes from the town of Glingor, takes care of all inquiries behind the scenes, whether it’s interview requests or sponsorship contracts.
Jonas Vingegaard says about Trine and his daughter Frida: “I am a family man. A family man who loves spending time at home with his women. They are my rock.”
In September 2024, a second child joined daughter Frida – a boy.
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However, Vingegaard will probably have to leave his home country of Denmark soon.
He still lives near his hometown of Glyngøre, a town in the Skive municipality in the Midtjylland region. “We can’t live in Denmark because unfortunately there are no mountains there. So we have to deal with that,” says Mrs. Vingegaard.
Until now, she has often traveled with her husband and daughter Trine. “But now she’s reaching an age where she needs stability in her everyday life and playmates.” A move to Switzerland is on the cards.
Vingegaard: FTP & Training
In professional cycling, everything now revolves around FTP (Functional Threshold Power). FTP refers to the maximum power a rider can maintain for one hour.
Two aspects are particularly important for perfecting your FTP value: perfect training and (even) more perfect nutrition.
What is Jonas Vingegaard’s FTP value?
For men in the world-class range, an FTP of 6.4 watts per kilogram is considered the top value. Jonas Vingegaard weighs around 66 kilograms. This puts Vingegaard’s FTP at around 420 watts.
Vingegaard doping: Is he clean?
Is Jonas Vingegaard the first or second Danish winner in Tour history? Opinions are divided on this.
In 1996, Bjarne Riis became the first Dane to win the Grande Boucle, but years later he made a full confession of doping, whereupon the Tour organizers removed him from the list of winners. However, this was reversed because the use of doping expires after eight years.
His rapid rise from fish factory worker to 2022 Tour de France winner is also causing mixed feelings?
How serious is the Vingegaard doping threat?
There is a certain irony in the fact that Vingegaard only really gets going in the high mountains. After all, Denmark’s highest point, Yding Skovhöj, is just 173 meters above sea level.
This is shown by data from the 2022 Tour de France: during his attack on Mont Ventoux, Vingegaard rode the last six particularly difficult kilometers to the summit considerably faster than anyone else ahead of him – and also faster than the representatives of the high-doping era. Independent performance diagnosticians were amazed by this achievement.
Fittingly, Team Jumbo-Visma also found itself at the center of a debate at the time because it openly admitted to using ketone supplements.
These are supplements that can accelerate fat burning. Although they are not on the doping list, the Dutch Anti-Doping Agency feels uncomfortable with them, to say the least. Other teams refrain from using them because the side effects have not been sufficiently researched.
Vingegaard says on the subject of doping: “I am absolutely clean, I don’t take anything and I am proud of what I have achieved. I can look myself in the eye and say: no one will ever take my Tour victory away from me because I won it completely clean.”
