"We can say we’re here to win the Tour de France" - Matteo Jorgenson 'proud' of Jonas Vingegaard's immense recovery from injury

After their all-conquering dominance of 2023, Team Visma | Lease a Bike have probably been the most unlucky team in the entire peloton in 2024. Things have continued to go against them in the early stages of the Tour de France with Wilco Kelderman, Wout van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson all crashing in the opening two stages.

Thankfully, in Jorgenson's case at least, things aren't too severe with the American suffering just some cuts and scrapes despite the scary nature of his crash. “I don’t have any serious injuries. I feel quite OK, somehow,” the 25-year-old revealed in conversation with Velo post-stage 2. “I somehow got up and checked myself out and I really just lost skin. I expected a lot worse, I went down at a pretty high rate of speed.”

In terms of the crash itself, Jorgenson is more frustrated with the stupidity of the incident that anything else. “Basically, I was just getting a bottle out of a feed bag and two riders in front of me split around a huge hole at the last minute,” Jorgenson explained of the crash. “I had one hand inside the bag, one hand on the bars, I hit the hole and my left hand slipped off the bars. I’ve seen it happen a million times to other guys, it’s just bad luck.”

Having been able to remount and re-find his way to the front of the peloton, Jorgenson was ultimately distanced by a Tadej Pogacar attack on the second ascent of the San Luca climb. Was the crash a mitigating factor in Jorgenson's 21 second time loss? “I felt as good as I could ask for,” he answers. “When Pogacar went, I didn’t really expect or attempt to follow. It’s more just letting Jonas Vingegaard follow.”

And follow Jorgenson's Team Visma | Lease a Bike leader did, impressing everyone with his immense powers of recovery. “I’m just impressed by him and proud of him,” Jorgenson says of Vingegaard. “The way he’s handling himself on descents and in the bunch, his confidence level on the bike. I’ve seen other riders have crashes very similar to his and it takes them years to come back. The way he’s acting, also riding, is really, really impressive. It shows how good of a rider he is and how much work he has put in the last months. Now, we can start to be confident and we can say we’re here to win the Tour de France a third time.”