Matteo Jorgenson already knew it hadn't been his team's day, he didn't need an on-the-nose metaphor to hammer home the point at the end of the E3 Saxo Classic. He got it anyway.
On crossing the finish line in fifth place, 1:50 behind winner Mathieu van der Poel, Jorgenson longed only for the warmth of the Visma-Lease A Bike team bus, but there was another episode of ill fortune before he reached that relative luxury. As the American soft-pedalled through the drizzle towards his sanctuary, another rider changed direction abruptly in front of him and brought him crashing to the ground.
"It was insult to injury more than anything," Jorgenson smiled when he emerged from the bus a little later. "I had a very light crash, I was behind a rider from another team who didn't look back and he just turned to his bus immediately without looking and he took me out, but we were going 15kph so I'm fine."
The final hour of the E3 Saxo Classic had been played out in the spitting rain and dank gloom so typical of this neck of the woods at this time of the year. Jacques Brel would probably have knocked a song out of an afternoon where a grey grimness gradually seemed to wash over every inch of the Flemish Ardennes. Jorgenson had to make do with fifth place and a nasty chill.
"I was just sitting in the wheels, and I got super cold," said Jorgenson, who spent the run-in as part of a chasing group behind the lone leader Van der Poel and his Visma teammate Wout van Aert, who was stuck in a lonesome pursuit of his old rival. He could only watch when Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek) jumped across to Van Aert in the closing kilometres.
"I was getting colder and colder and colder, and my legs just seized. I couldn't follow Stuyven, and I was on his wheel when he went. I went myself but I could barely pedal, I was just frozen."
Visma-Lease a Bike's race had been an ill-starred one from the outset. European champion Christophe Laporte was already absent through illness, and they proceeded to lose Per Strand Hagenes to an early fall. Dylan van Baarle went down in the same crash and the Dutchman champion later endured at least two mechanical mishaps. Tiesj Benoot crashed before the Kapelberg and then Van Aert himself fell on the Paterberg, precisely as Van der Poel was hurling himself into his race-winning offensive.
"It was mostly just a day of bad luck for our team," Jorgenson said. "We had a lot of unfortunate events in a row. We just lost the strength of our team throughout the day, it slowly went down. I think we almost saved it, actually, but the nail in the coffin was when Wout crashed on the Paterberg. This kind of ended our race. After that, he was able to get back on the Kwaremont and get close to Mathieu, but at that point, the damage was done."
By then, Jorgenson was the only Visma rider in a position to help Van Aert and he performed his duties well, first by deftly stalling the chasing group to allow his leader to catch up, and then by teeing up the Belgian's counter-attack on the Oude Kwaremont. With a shade under 40km still to race, the situation wasn't entirely irretrievable, and Van Aert even closed to within 15 seconds of Van der Poel before the Dutchman pulled away definitively on the Karnemelkbeekstraat.
"I just had to manage the group in front, make sure nothing got away behind Mathieu and wait for Wout to get back," Jorgenson said. "Once he was back, I just set a pace on the Kwaremont to get us closer to Mathieu. I was hoping he'd be able to bridge across, but he just didn't quite get there. I think he had to go really quite deep after the crash and he just didn't quite get there."
Flanders focus
Despite the ill fortune that beset his team, Jorgenson's performance here was of a piece with his fine displays to date this season, his first since joining Visma from Movistar. The American impressed at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and then beat Remco Evenepoel to win Paris-Nice.
He looks destined to play a key role in support of Jonas Vingegaard at the Tour de France in July, though he is, in his own words, in Classics mode for the next month. "Never come into GC mode again, thank you," Evenepoel had quipped on Instagram on Thursday.
"The preparation is much different, it's all new for me," Jorgenson said. "But I think the team can make me quite versatile with the training we have. My coach Tim Heemskerk is a super smart guy and I'm very impressed with him. He's able to manage me very well and he can give me the versatility to do both Classics and stage races."
Jorgenson will line up again at Dwars door Vlaanderen on Wednesday before taking in the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and Amstel Gold Race. Twelve months ago, Jorgenson placed a fine 9th after an aggressive showing in his Ronde debut. This time out, he will again look to race on the front foot in support of Van Aert.
Indeed, Jorgenson briefly managed that at Harelbeke, ghosting ahead of the group of favourites and up to the early break after the Stationberg before Van der Poel stitched the race together again. "That was the objective, to get guys ahead of Van der Poel and Wout so they could come across," Jorgenson said. "But we just had a lot of unfortunate events with the team, so it didn't work out."
