Making the best out of a bad situation: Matteo Jorgenson eyeing Tour de France debut

Matteo Jorgenson has been sidelined from competition since the final day of Paris-Nice, and has revealed the reason which has seen him off the peloton ever since, and why he won't be in the upcoming Giro d'Italia.

In an interview with VeloNews, Jorgenson has admitted that sometimes one step back leads to two steps forward: “It’s kind of funny, I might do the Tour because of the injury and all the time off I had to take. The Tour probably would never have been possible if all that didn’t happen. I’m on the ‘long team,’ but with the Tour, you have to be one of the best. So I’m trying to put my head down now to get back to a good level to show the team that I am ready for that."

He's said that the injury that has kept him off the bike for several weeks this spring had a very unusual origin: "I flipped with my bike while my foot was still in the pedal, and somehow it put enough tension on my hamstring to tear it... What I know now is that I was just tearing it more every single pedal stroke, and bit by bit displacing the tendon."

Sure enough, that altered his preparation and initial season calendar which had make his second start at the Giro d'Italia. With that being said, he entered the list for the team's Tour de France lineup. "There are positives and negatives with everything. This kind of gave me a decent little break in the middle in the spring and took some of the pressure off. I didn’t have to go to any more races and could take two to three weeks off the bike," Jorgenson added.

What the near future holds for the young American is still unknown, however taking into account the potential he has shown over the last few seasons, a Tour de France debut may very well be on the plans of Movistar.

“Now it could work out to where I’m actually in better shape in the middle of the summer than I would have been. Now I’m just really focused on making the best of it," he concluded.