Matteo Jorgenson on Jonas Vingegaard's crash: "I just came back from a pee break and saw him standing on the side of the road with a lot of blood on his face"

In a post-race interview, Matteo Jorgenson talked about what was a chaotic day of racing for Team Visma | Lease a Bike at Paris-Nice. Whilst the American rider rode a great final climb and got back to the race lead, that came about due to the crash and injuries of his own teammate Jonas Vingegaard.

For Jorgenson it was a day that was all about the final ascent, where Axel Zingle positioned him perfectly, and he then put his own pace up the ramps that reached as high as 18% in the final kilometers. "I felt very good, better than yesterday. Then the conditions were very strange and I couldn’t get warm after that chaos. Today I felt normal again, I put everything on the last climb. A steady pace is better for a bigger guy like me," he explained.

He managed to finish third on the day, shedding a few seconds to Lenny Martínez but importantly gaining time on the likes of João Almeida who had won the day before, Florian Lipowitz and mainly Mattias Skjelmose who had a very difficult final climb. Now, with Vingegaard having struggled deeply, the American is back in the yellow jersey with a lead of 22 seconds.

The crash of his teammate however was the big news of the day, and it puts the team's plans and tactics into question for the upcoming days. “I don’t know much about what exactly happened to Jonas, I just came back from a pee break and saw him standing on the side of the road with a lot of blood on his face," he recalls.

“Later he came to me and said that his hand hurt a lot, that he had trouble braking and holding his handlebars properly. He didn’t feel comfortable in the fight when it got really stressful. That’s why he sat more at the back and did his best, which I’m proud of.”

Vingegaard didn't lose serious time and can still potentially winning the race, but his facial and hand injuries can be a big obstacle in his path, and a withdrawal from the race can't be excluded at the time being. Over the next few hours the team will go through the full scale of his injuries, but Jorgenson describes their communication throughout the stage.

“He told me to ride for myself. Victor [Campenaerts] stayed with him, everyone else with me. We tried to arrange that as best we could on the final climb," he added. "But to be clear: I really hope Jonas can start again on Friday, when his head and hand have been checked properly. I hope he is okay. Health is more important than the race.”