The abiding image of the day will be of Wout van Aert sitting forlornly on the roadside, his Visma-Lease a Bike jersey and his Tour of Flanders dreams torn asunder. Dwars door Vlaanderen winner Matteo Jorgenson and teammate knew as much when he arrived in the press room afterwards.
At that point, an hour or so after the finish, the full extent of Van Aert’s injuries had yet to be confirmed, but it already seemed clear that the Belgian’s Classics campaign had come to an abrupt end. Shortly afterwards, Visma-Lease a Bike confirmed that Van Aert had sustained a broken collarbone and ribs when he fell with 67km remaining.
Jorgenson was an eyewitness to that mass crash on the approach to the Kanarieberg, and he immediately understood that Van Aert would play no further part in Dwars door Vlaanderen. Deep down, he must already have guessed his team leader would miss the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, too.
“I don’t have news on Wout, but it was a shit situation,” Jorgenson said as reporters laid out their dictaphones on the table in front of him.
“The crash was really bad. I was right behind it. I tried to make the best of the situation in the end. I knew he wasn’t going to be back in the race after seeing the crash. But Tiesj [Benoot] and I were there, so we continued with the plan.”
In a press conference such as this, the winner is typically asked to talk reporters through his management of the finale, like a golfer going over his scorecard and shot selection after landing a Major. This, however, was one of those races where the winner’s story would be a footnote to the day’s great drama. Jorgenson knew that as well as anyone in the room.
The group of favourites, Jorgenson estimated, had been travelling at over 80 kph when the crash took place, though he was reluctant to blame either rider error or course design for the incident.
The Kanarieberg has been removed from the Tour of Flanders route this year precisely because of the dangers of this high-speed approach to the climb. Flanders Classics CEO Tomas Van Den Spiegel justified its inclusion at Dwars door Vlaanderen, however, deeming the race to be “less nervous” than the Ronde.
“There’s plenty of roads in Flanders that are dangerous to be honest,” Jorgenson said. “It’s just part of the race. It’s part of the sport. We’re going fast and all fighting to be in position. I’m not going to say we need to take this road out, because there’s also other roads that are just kind of part of it, in my opinion.
“It was a racing incident. These races have clear points where you have to be in front. Every team wants to be there. A couple of guys came together, and they came down at high speed, there was nothing more to it than that. It didn’t look like it was anyone’s fault in particular. When you come together at that speed, things happen.”
The Tour of Flanders
For Visma-Lease a Bike, too many things have been happening over the past couple of weeks. “Unfortunate events,” was the euphemism deployed by Jorgenson to describe the sequence of ill fortune that has bedevilled and depleted their Classics unit since Milan-San Remo.
Christophe Laporte has already been ruled out of the Tour of Flanders through illness, while Dylan van Baarle’s participation was in doubt. Jan Tratnik crashed at Gent-Wevelgem and abandoned Dwars door Vlaanderen, while Benoot was a faller at E3 Saxo Classic last week. Even Jorgenson hasn’t been entirely spared. He crashed, albeit without consequence, after placing fifth in Harelbeke.
“It wasn’t anything, really,” the US rider said. “We had a turbulent last few weeks, but we just had to make the best of it. You have to keep up the morale. On the bus this morning, we had three riders getting wounds tended to, but you have to keep the vibe up, it’s on all of us.”
Jorgenson did his bit for the Visma vibe here by taking the race in hand and forcing the issue on the Kanarieberg, just as Van Aert had initially planned. In the finale, he found himself in a front group of six with Benoot, and the Visma duo outmanoeuvred their breakaway companions. Jorgenson pressed clear with 7km remaining to become the second man to inscribe both Paris-Nice and Dwars door Vlaanderen on his palmarès after Raymond Impanis achieved the feat in the 1950s.
“I like the racing here, that’s for sure,” said Jorgenson, who secured his Olympic berth with his victory in Waregem. The vagaries of USA Cycling’s qualification rules meant that his Paris-Nice victory had not been sufficient to rubber stamp his ticket.
“It’s only one-day WorldTour races that count,” Jorgenson explained. “I was also shocked, I have to say. The Monday after Paris-Nice, I went and looked at the document and thought, ‘OK, I still didn’t make it'. But now I can say I’m going, so it’s quite nice. As an American, the Olympics are the biggest sporting event of them all – behind the Super Bowl, we’ll say.”
In this corner of the world, of course, the Tour of Flanders outweighs the Olympic Games, the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and just about everything in between. And this Sunday, Van Aert’s every move would have drawn more scrutiny than Patrick Mahomes and Taylor Swift combined.
In his absence, World Champion Mathieu van der Poel’s (Alpecin-Deceuninck) favourite status has been burnished still further, but the leadership of Visma-Lease a Bike at the Ronde is also open. Jorgenson, for his performances here and across the season to date, was the obvious candidate to head their challenge on Sunday, even if he was reluctant to discuss the idea while Van Aert was still having his injuries examined.
“I’ll leave it to the directors to make the decision on this,” said Jorgenson. “We’re just going to have to readjust our plans and reassess.”
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