Jonas Vingegaard has already made history this year by completing the Grand Tour sweep and now he is chasing another marker at the Tour de France.
In May, Dane Vingegaard won the Giro d'Italia, thus becoming only the eighth man to win all three Grand Tours, and the first to complete the sweep since Briton Chris Froome did so by winning the Giro in 2018.
Now, the 29-year-old is bidding to become only the ninth man to win the Giro and Tour in the same year.
His great rival at the Tour, Tadej Pogacar, became the first man in more than a quarter of a century to achieve that feat two years ago.
Peaking for the Giro in May and then again for the Tour in July is no easy task, especially when you have eyes on overall victory.
Vingegaard, who won the Tour back-to-back in 2022 and 2023, is riding his fourth consecutive Grand Tour, having finished second in the Grande Boucle last year before winning the Vuelta, and then this year's Giro.
That was a run which Froome took on in 2017-18, winning the first three before finishing third at the Tour.
"I really did feel as if, having done and won three Grand Tours in a row, that the fourth was just a stretch too far for me," Froome told AFP.
"Certainly, four Grand Tours on the trot and aiming to win the GC of each of them, it's a big ask.
"He (Vingegaard) has definitely got a lot on his plate, but I definitely found that the transition from Giro to Tour was much harder for me to deal with than between Tour and Vuelta," added Froome, who rode the Tour and then Vuelta five times in his career but only tackled the Giro-Tour double once.
"Once I got into the last week of the Tour, I was running on fumes."
Vingegaard said that he managed his efforts in Italy to keep something back for the Tour, where he will try to dethrone four-time winner Pogacar.
"Without taking anything away from the Giro, it's true that I didn't have to completely kill myself and I didn't get out of the Giro completely on my knees," said the Visma-Lease a Bike team leader.
"That also means that you can recover faster afterwards and start your training and get into a good rhythm quicker.
"If you're on your knees after the Giro, you need two weeks, maybe even more to recover, and then it's hard to start building towards the Tour."
'HARD BALANCE TO STRIKE'
Every year, several riders backing up the Giro and Tour, but rarely with eyes on a high placing in both.
Australian Michael Storer finished 10th at the Giro last year before coming 42nd at the Tour.
The 29-year-old Tudor rider was seventh in Italy in May but said he will target stage wins in France.
"It's definitely challenging to manage the month in between well," he told reporters this week in Barcelona.
"A month sounds like a lot of time, but it's really not. You need to rest and recover, but not too much, because then you lose too much shape," he added.
"It's a really hard balance to strike."
Storer acknowledged that Vingegaard would have found it easier to recover from his Giro efforts.
"Maybe, relatively, the Giro was easier for him than it was for me, because he won it, and I don't think he needed to go as deep as everyone else," said Storer.
Netcompany Ineos's Dutch rider Thymen Arensman is also doing the Giro-Tour double for the second year running.
Last year, he rode in support of Colombian teammate Egan Bernal at the Giro before finishing 12th at the Tour.
The 26-year-old finished fourth in Italy in May and will likely also be more focussed on a stage win than the general classification (GC) at the Grande Boucle.
"Mentally, it's really tiring to do a GC and then do the biggest Grand Tour with how big it is, how big of a circus it is," he said.
"It's quite tough, of course. I think you have to manage the time in between super, super well and I did."