Finishing a grand tour is a mean feat. One certainly beyond the means of the Cyclry team, not even in those fantasies we play to ourselves when we fall asleep (Emily Rudd is always very impressed with how hard we try though). Winning a grand tour is even harder, requiring a world-class time trial, high-altitude climbing endurance, unshakeable tactical intelligence, and the ability to avoid splitting a collarbone on a random traffic island in western France.
Winning all three grand tours? The Triple Crown is a feat so difficult that, across the entire history of the sport, only a tiny handful of riders have ever managed to do it. That handful of people grew to eight on Sunday, with Jonas Vingegaard capturing his first maglia rosa in Rome, following Tour and Vuelta victories in the first half of the 2020s.
Here is how the true kings of the sport stacked up their historic records.
Jacques Anquetil
- Joined the club: 1963
- Giro d’Italia: 1960 | 1964
- Tour de France: 1957 | 1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1964
- Vuelta a España: 1963
“Monsieur Chrono” Anquetil approached Grand Tour racing like a corporate spreadsheet, bleeding his rivals dry in long, flat time trials and defending his lead in the high mountains. More famous for being the first rider to win five Tours de France, he also became the first rider to complete the trilogy by conquering the 1963 Vuelta, sealing his status as the grandfather of modern multi-week dominance.
Felice Gimondi
- Joined the club: 1968
- Giro d’Italia: 1967 | 1969 | 1976
- Tour de France: 1965
- Vuelta a España: 1968
Gimondi’s career came at a difficult time, overlapping with Eddy Merckx’s own career. Despite spending his peak years routinely subjected to the Cannibal’s suffocating dominance, the elegant Italian carved out his own slice of history. He took a sensational Tour victory as a neo-pro in 1965, backed it up at the 1967 Giro, and completed his collection by winning the 1968 Vuelta.
Eddy Merckx
- Joined the club: 1973
- Giro d’Italia: 1968 | 1970 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974
- Tour de France: 1969 | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1974
- Vuelta a España: 1973
We all know Eddy Merckx, the mostly undisputed GOAT of the sport. Five time Tour champion, five time Giro champion. And one time Vuelta champion – guess that race must be five times harder than the other two.
His Triple Crown arrived in May 1973. Merckx rocked up to Spain, demoralized the domestic field to win his first and only Vuelta, and then entered the Giro d’Italia just four days later. He won that too, obviously.
Bernard Hinault
- Joined the club: 1980
- Giro d’Italia: 1980 | 1982 | 1985
- Tour de France: 1978 | 1979 | 1981 | 1982 | 1985
- Vuelta a España: 1978 | 1983
Another five-time Tour winner–we’ll spare you yet another link to our ‘five times’ t-shirt–demonstrating that the Triple Crown really is the domain of the sport’s greats. (The only absent five-time Tour winner from this club? Miguel Indurain, who never won his home grand tour.)
The Badger was a brutal rider, a true hard man who reveled in making races as hard as possible for everybody involved. He completed his Grand Tour collection at the 1980 Giro d’Italia, as part of a legendary decade where he won every three-week race he completed. Apart from the ones where he had a broken knee or a rider strike got in his way.
Alberto Contador
- Joined the club: 2008
- Giro d’Italia: 2008 | 2015
- Tour de France: 2007 | 2009
- Vuelta a España: 2008 | 2012 | 2014
We have to skip forward nearly three decades for the next member of the club. So far forward that we covered it on this very website, in fact. (Ok, technically on its precursor.)
Alberto Contador put together the fastest Triple Crown blitz in the modern era, sweeping all three trophies in a little over 14 months. After winning the 2007 Tour, his Astana squad was barred from the 2008 French edition due to management scandals. Contador responded by pivoting to the 2008 Giro on short notice, winning it, and then cleaning up the 2008 Vuelta that September.
Vincenzo Nibali
- Joined the club: 2014
- Giro d’Italia: 2013 | 2016
- Tour de France: 2014
- Vuelta a España: 2010
Vinny Nibz is a Cyclry favorite, and the only rider to join the club using a Tour de France victory as his final piece of the puzzle. It was an assured 2014 Tour victory that saw “The Shark of Messina” join the Triple Crown. From taking the lead on stage two to navigating the slick northern cobblestones better than the specialist Classics riders, he spent three weeks operating on a different plane and won four stages along the way. He took the yellow jersey by almost eight minutes, the largest winning margin in 17 years.
Chris Froome
- Joined the club: 2018
- Giro d’Italia: 2018
- Tour de France: 2013 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017
- Vuelta a España: 2011 | 2017
Chris Froome’s final act at the top table of professional cycling was to gain the Triple Crown in style: winning the 2017 Tour, the 2017 Vuelta, and the 2018 Giro meant he was the reigning champion of all three grand tours at once. And can we take just a moment to remind you of that 80km solo ride over the Finestre that won him the 2018 Giro?
His late-career was one of bad crashes, poor performances, and questionable endorsements of basically any product on the market, but it’s hard not to look at his overall record with awe.
Jonas Vingegaard
- Joined the club: 2026
- Giro d’Italia: 2026
- Tour de France: 2022 | 2023
- Vuelta a España: 2025
The newest entrant to the club, though he will surely be joined at some point by his generational rival Tadej Pogacar. The two-time Tour winner won this year’s Giro with a conservative opening week riding within himself, followed by an total demolition of the entire field in the high Alps and Dolomites during the race’s final week. His status as favorite was never in doubt.
Despite his domination in this year’s Giro, his two Tour wins remain probably his standout victories. He’s one of the very few people who’ve taken on Pogacar head to head and actually won… twice.