Matteo Jorgenson says his role in Visma-Lease a Bike’s Tour de France team will not change this summer after Jonas Vingegaard crashed out of Paris-Nice on stage five.
The American is on the cusp of a second overall victory but made clear that he feels it is not yet a done deal with a difficult last stage in Nice still to come. Jorgenson has a gap of 37 seconds over Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s Florian Lipowitz who sits second overall, with Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers) one minute and 20 seconds down in third.
"It will be a very dangerous stage, in terms of the GC," Jorgenson explained as he looked ahead to the final day. "Several times in the past the eighth stage of Paris-Nice has seen a change of the overall lead. I think it will be an aggressive stage and I have to be ready for a fight tomorrow."
Visma-Lease a Bike came into the week-long stage race with the aim of overall victory through Vingegaard. However, the team were forced to adjust their plans after losing the two-time Tour de France winner to injury.
"He’s ok, but he has a lot of pain in his hand," the team's Head of Racing Grischa Niermann said on Friday when questioned on the extent of Vingegaard's injuries. "We did some x-rays, but it doesn’t seem like anything is broken, although it is still very painful for him and he is not feeling well after the crash. We will now monitor him and after a few days we will then have to decide what’s next."
"He felt shit about leaving the race," he added. "But we absolutely don’t want to take any risks with him. I think everyone could see that he was in a lot of pain so we had to make that decision."
Despite the minor setback, Vingegaard is set to be the Dutch team’s leader once again at the Tour in July. He is due to race the Volta a Catalunya in Spain in just over one week's time, although Niermann made clear that it was too early to say whether that plan would have to change in order to give the 28-year-old more time to recover.
Vingegaard faced a race against the clock in order to be fit for the 2024 edition of the Tour after being caught up in a brutal crash at Itzulia Basque Country last April. The Dane eventually made the start line in Florence, but he was unable to match Tadej Pogačar who won by more than six minutes.
Speaking after pulling on a fresh yellow jersey at the Auron ski station on Saturday, Jorgenson immediately played down suggestions that he could pick up the baton from Vingegaard and go toe-to-toe with Pogačar this summer if the Dane's recovery is delayed this time round.
"No not at all, that's not the plan,” he said firmly.
Much of this year’s Paris-Nice has taken place in foul weather, with the long climb to the finish on stage eight covered in heavy snow. Michael Storer took the win for Tudor Pro Cycling after distancing Mauro Schmid (Jayco-AIUla) in the closing kilometres. The Australian's efforts saw him move up to fourth overall and will have aided his team’s cause in the rush for a wild card invite to the Tour.
"The weather was all over the place again today," Storer said as he reflected on his first WorldTour win for a number of years. "It just got worse throughout the day so it was hard to make the right choices with my clothing and stuff like that. In the end, I was going so fast that I had no choice but to wear less. The temperature really dropped in the last few kilometres, it really was epic conditions to finish the stage in."
