Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard celebrates on the podium in the French Alps on July 13, 2022. Photo: AFP

Jonas Vingegaard was crowned Tour de France champion on July 24 after a grueling 3,350 kilometers, 21-stage race, ending a journey which had its roots in the mundane surroundings of a fish factory in his native Denmark.

He follows compatriot Bjarne Riis who won the world's most famous bike race - although later admitted to doping - in 1996, the year Vingegaard was born.

It is a stunning success for Vingegaard, three weeks after the race pedaled off from Copenhagen for the first of three stages on home ground.

Over 35,000 paying fans had packed into Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens to greet the Tour de France riders before the race.

On the opening day time-trial, a wall of sound reverberated around Copenhagen, as their home hope's progress was tracked along the downtown route.

While much of the rest of the world was unaware of Vingegaard, the man from northern Jutland was already a household name at home.

That was not only because of his cycling skills, but his mother-in-law who shot to national celebrity after competing on the Great Danish Bake Off show, and also featured on Denmark's version of Dancing with the Stars.

Vingegaard was born in December 1996 and raised in Hillerslev, a fishing village of just 370 inhabitants, in a completely flat landscape on the shores of the North Sea.

Denmark's previous Tour winner Riis was born in Herning, around 100 kilometers from Hillerslev.

As a child, Vingegaard played handball and soccer and was an avid fan of Liverpool, before turning to cycling after watching the Tour of Denmark pass close to his home. With his slender frame and the windy flatlands of Denmark, his staggering climbing skills were yet to be revealed.

He joined Colo-Quick, a continental Tour team, at 19 and worked in a fish business in the mornings before training. It was at Colo-Quick that he met his partner Trine Hansen, a marketing manager who is nine years his senior, with the couple having a young daughter Frida.

Vingegaard joined Jumbo in 2019, where he says he "learned to cycle."

He came to prominence at 2021's Tour de France, where riding under the radar he suddenly found himself team leader when Primoz Roglic crashed out, finishing second.

He relentlessly thanks her when interviewed, speaking of "his two girls at home" being the rocks of his life.

After meeting French President Emmanuel Macron following stage 18, Vingegaard was stunned.

On this Tour, he bettered two-time defending champion Tadej Pogacar on both the toughest mountain stages to clinch the champion's yellow jersey that will make him a hero in his homeland.

AFP