"For a guy my size, it'd be a pretty big challenge to go for three weeks" - Matteo Jorgenson unsure Grand Tour GC is in his future

After an electric start to his Team Visma | Lease a Bike career, winning Paris-Nice and Dwars Door Vlaanderen among other impressive performances, big things are expected of Matteo Jorgenson. Whether he can compete for Grand Tour wins however, the American isn't sure.

"I think, for a guy my size, it'd be a pretty big challenge to go for three weeks with so much energy demand," the 24-year-old explains doubtfully in conversation with Cycling Weekly. "That’s basically the biggest limiting factor. I just have a much bigger frame than most of these guys, and it’s really difficult to see how I would maintain that over three weeks."

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With Primoz Roglic having departed for pastures new at BORA - hansgrohe and a return date for Jonas Vingegaard still far from clear after his horrific crash at the Itzulia Basque Country, there is certainly an opening within Team Visma | Lease a Bike for a Grand Tour leader. As Jorgenson insists however, that's unlikely to be him.

"We haven't seen a guy my size winning Grand Tours since maybe Miguel Indurain," Jorgenson continues. "I think, nowadays, the energy demands are really so high that when you scale it from a guy like Jonas to a guy like me, I just need so much more energy to get over the mountain days. One-week races I can get through pretty well. It's when it's chained together over three, four days between 3,000 and 4,000 metres [of climbing], I don't think I could recover well enough. Obviously that's just me theorising, I've never tried it."

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Nevertheless, it's harder for Jorgenson to deny just how good he's been since the turn of the year. "It's been unreal," he says, blown away by the difference in the Team Visma | Lease a Bike set-up compared to Movistar Team's. "I just wasn't aware of the scope of organisation here. There's a bunch of jobs that I didn't even know existed in a cycling team."

"I was just having a meeting with the head of apparel, who's a former rider, Paul Martens, and his only job is to be in charge of all the cycling clothing. He tries to meet with the riders and get all of our feedback to see if there are any issues and then make orders. It's a job I never knew existed. But then once you have him, you realise it's actually really important. You can make a big difference with the clothing," Jorgenson concludes.

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