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Matteo Jorgenson and Brandon McNulty lighting up Paris-Nice, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel sending flares, and everyone wondering where Primož Roglič is.
It was another wild weekend of racing in Europe, with Ellen Van Dijk returning to the winner’s circle barely five months after giving birth, and Lorena Wiebes 4-peating up VAM Mountain to win Ronde van Drenthe.
Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico were the season’s first major men’s WorldTour stage races on European roads, and some key takeaways are already emerging.
The “Big 4” didn’t quite face off, with Tadej Pogačar cooling his jets after his big Strade Bianche blowout, but if anyone carried momentum out of this first block of racing, it’s Ice King Vingegaard.
A new crop of sprinters is also confirming its place at the top of the hierarchy, with the likes of Jonathan Milan and Olav Kooij crashing the party with big wins last week. Former speedsters such as Caleb Ewan, Dylan Groenewegen, Mark Cavendish, and Fabio Jakobsen remain stuck in the slow lane, at least right now.
There’s a lot to dig into, so let’s start with the American in Paris-Nice:
Matteo Jorgenson’s hard-scrabble road to the top
Sunday’s victory at Paris-Nice is the capstone in Matteo Jorgenson’s remarkable rags-to-riches rise to the top of the men’s WorldTour.
The 24-year-old is just the third American to win the prestigious French stage race, and his arrival to the elite of the WorldTour peloton is an example of self-investment and singular determination to excel in bike racing.
In 2024, Jorgenson stepped up to a new level in his high-profile transfer to Visma-Lease a Bike, and he’s now seeing the on-the-road support and back-room backing that he’s never had up to this point of his career.
Also read: Americans light up Paris-Nice
Ex-pro Greg Van Avermaert already called Jorgenson the best transfer of 2024, and he’s quickly being proven correct.
Like any journey in cycling, there are years of hard work and an unrelenting obsession to detail before an athlete hits the winner’s podium.
A photo hit Twitter last week of Jorgenson and McNulty as 14-year-olds racing in Europe with the USA Cycling’s development program. Jorgenson was plowing in the mud and muck for more than a decade before anyone took notice.
Unlike some mega-talented riders like Remco Evenepoel or Tadej Pogačar, who rocket straight to the top, Jorgenson had to literally bang on doors and pound the pavement to earn a chance to race.
Taking a page from the U.S. cycling pioneers of generations ago, he packed up a suitcase and moved to Europe by himself to chase his dream of racing bikes.
After flooding sport directors and managers with emails, he landed a stagiaire gig with Ag2r in 2019. Movistar offered him his first pro contract the following season just as COVID hit in what turned out to be one of the Spanish team’s best recruits in years.
GC at Paris-Nice tightly bound, who wins? … its poll time!
— Andrew Hood (@EuroHoody) March 9, 2024
Jorgenson’s attention to detail and personal ambition far outstripped the resources that Movistar was willing to invest in the largely unknown American.
Movistar simply doesn’t have the deep pockets like super-teams Visma and UAE Team Emirates to send half its team to altitude for weeks on end, so Jorgenson, knowing what he had to do to reach the top, did it on his own.
He paid out of his own pocket for stints at altitude and stayed at the unique “altitude hotel” along Spain’s Mediterranean coast to prepare for the season’s major dates.
Jorgenson also invested in motor-pacing sessions, TT material, signed on a personal nutritionist and massage therapist, and all the other infrastructure needed to excel, all out of his own relatively meager neo-pro salary.
In short, like a good investor looking for longterm gains, he re-invested all of pro earnings to become a better athlete.
The Idahoan also dove headfirst into the European cycling culture, and moved to Nice, France, where he roomed with Will Barta, basing himself on the Côte d’Azur rather than in Girona, Spain, where so many of the North American pros land.
That’s not easy stuff for anyone. Jorgenson did it his way, paid his dues, and the dividends are starting to pay off in exponential ways.
Visma-Lease a Bike, who saw Jorgenson’s untapped potential, gave him at shot at leadership at Paris-Nice in what’s the latest confirmation of the team’s belief in his future.
Jorgenson now turns his attention to the spring classics, where he will be wingman to Wout van Aert, Christophe Laporte, and Dylan Van Baarle. After punching into the top-10 last year at both E3 Saxo Classic and the Tour of Flanders, who knows what could happen.
Jorgenson’s living the dream, but he worked hard to make it a reality.
Remco Evenepoel was marking the wrong wheel
Remco Evenepoel cited a few reasons why he lost Paris-Nice.
Though he seemed happy enough with a stage win and second overall in his first stage race on French roads, he called out bad weather during the team time trial in stage 3 that negatively impacted Soudal Quick-Step and the other late-starting squads, and then questioned UAE’s tactics on stage 4 the next day for letting attacking riders sneak away with the stage win and jersey.
Yet Evenepoel’s biggest error during the “Race to the Sun” was that he was watching the wrong wheel.
Also read: ‘Big 4’ Tour de France report card
Evenepoel must have bought into the hype that Paris-Nice was going to be a Ali vs. Frazier-style matchup between him and Primož Roglič.
The Slovenian superstar, however, was on a slow simmer all week. Rogla racing for the first time in Bora-Hansgrohe jersey, he certainly wasn’t blowing the doors off anyone.
And he was even joking by the weekend and told reporters, “I am so far off the back, I do not even know who is leading,” before adding that he didn’t need to win Paris-Nice. For Roglič in 2024, all that matters is the Tour de France, and a cold, wet, and potentially dangerous Paris-Nice wasn’t worth the risk.
Evenepoel’s costliest mistake was letting Brandon McNulty, Jorgenson, and Mattias Skjelmose ride away in stage 5. Of course, there are no gifts in cycling, and those three took up the race and dropped everyone else.
Evenepoel hesitated, and those three took nearly a minute, and the overall GC with them.
Vingo’s Crushing KO
If Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico provided a preview of what’s in store for the upcoming grand tour season, Jonas Vingegaard is clearly the big winner.
Though the GC field at Tirreno wasn’t as deep as Paris-Nice, the Danish Iceman froze out the competition, and more than proved he is already in beast mode.
He blasted away from Juan Ayuso and Jai Hindley, Spain’s next big thing and a former Giro d’Italia winner, respectively, as if they were Conti-level pros. Unrivaled in two monster-watt attacks, Vingegaard systematically dismantled the overall as if he was doing intervals in a training camp.
Also read: Vingegaard stomps rivals
Ever modest, Vingegaard shrugged his shoulders, thanked his teammates, but revealed that already feels even stronger than in 2023.
“My level is still improving, and I hope to get even better before the Tour, but we will see in July,” he said. “To be the best rider in the world you have to beat those guys as well. I am in better shape than last season at this time.”
⏱️ Jonas Vingegaard climbed today San Giacomo (11,9 km@6,2%) in 26 min 05 sec at the mind-blowing speed of 27.37 km/h! This is one of the fastest ascents EVER recorded on a 6% gradient, normally it’s too hard to break away solo. And he’s not at 100% yet… #TirrenoAdriatico pic.twitter.com/JFWVEugspJ
— Mihai Simion (@faustocoppi60) March 8, 2024
UAE’s Ayuso was the lone rider who tried to match him, and he later revealed the pain.
“I think I’m the first human in this race,” the Spanish rider said this weekend. “Chapeaux to Jonas, he is on another level right now. I tried to hold his wheel, but I had to stop and get some air because I completely exploded.”
March is still early days, but of the top favorites, Vingegaard is already putting down a marker with back-to-back stage race victories.
Giving Milan-San Remo the respect it deserves
Monument season opens this weekend with Milano-Sanremo, the easiest to finish, but the hardest to win of the five historic one-days.
A new start in Pavia shouldn’t change the script too much. The race is still nearly 300km long to keep it the longest race of the season. Organizers turned the page on its traditional start in downtown Milan, perhaps for good, following a long-running feud with the sprawling metropolis that doesn’t like to have its roads closed down for bike races (there’s certainly more to it than that).
But just like Paris-Roubaix, which starts in Compiègne about 50 miles north of the City of Light, La Primavera will keep its name.
Also read: Can Van der Poel win every race this spring?
The debate over San Remo blossoms every year. Some hate it, others love it. I am definitely in the latter camp.
And while it is likely the easiest of the five monuments to finish, 300km is still more than six hours on the bike, and that is just one of the factors that add up to make it the most unpredictable and spectacular race of the year.
Sure, the first five hours might not be the most riveting, but that final hour once the race hits Italian Riviera is as good as it gets.
Most races on the elite men’s calendar start with about a half-dozen legitimate contenders, but list is at least 20-deep at San Remo.
And the favorite’s list is perhaps the most dynamic and varied of any race of the year.
Time for Milan-San Remo 2023! Giuseppe Saronni won 40 years ago; Mo Fondriest won 30 years ago; Paolo Bettini won 20 years ago – Gerald Ciolek won 10 years ago… pic.twitter.com/iPQvkiGwJ0
— Graham Watson (@grahamwatson10) March 17, 2023
Sprinters are still holding out hope, though the last “pure sprinter” to win down the Via Roma was Arnaud Demare in 2016. Add the attackers, like Mathieu van der Poel or Pogačar, and the pure descenders, headlined by 2022 winner Matej Mohorič, who use their gravity acrobatics to hold off the bunch coming down the Poggio, and the list grows.
And then there are miracle chasers. Perhaps no other race can deliver these surprise winners like San Remo. Jasper Philipsen did it in 2021, Vincenzo Nibali, a pure climber and grand tour rider, pulled a heist in 2018, and TT machine Fabian Cancellara once rode the entire bunch off his wheel in the closing kilometer.
For me, San Remo is a better race — at least in terms of entertainment value and unpredictability — than Liège-Bastogne-Liège or Il Lombardia, but definitely a level behind Tour of Flanders, and my personal No. 1 Paris-Roubaix.
Drone footage coming soon to Tour de France?
Paris-Nice saw French broadcasters testing a new drone broadcasts system during the stage 3 team time trial.
The buzzing drone provided some stunning aerial footage that a helicopter or TV on a motorcycle could never provide.
Officials said the technology and equipment was being tested at Paris-Nice with the possible introduction during the 2024 Tour de France.
On adore ces images ! ♂️
We just love this kind of footage! ♂️#ParisNice pic.twitter.com/01RZr3XJkb
— Paris-Nice (@ParisNice) March 5, 2024
Chris Froome’s long goodbye
It seemed almost no one noticed, but Chris Froome was forced out of Tirreno-Adriatico after suffering a scaphoid fracture from a spill earlier in the race. The 38-year-old did not start stage 5, and further setbacks could make any hope of starting the 2024 Tour with Israel Premier Tech even more remote.
It’s a shame for Froome, who was at the absolute center of the conversation in professional cycling for a half-decade.
Also read: Froome hints at racing until 40
Of course, all that ended with his brutal crash at the 2019 Critérium du Dauphiné that nearly killed him. Simply coming back into the peloton was impressive enough, but it’s becoming painfully obvious to everyone that he will never win another yellow jersey.
Last year, Froome was left off the Tour de France squad, and did not race a grand tour. Tirreno was his first WorldTour start in nearly a year, and now it’s unknown if he’ll need surgery or when he’ll race again.
He joined Israel Premier Tech in 2021 on a five-year deal, and he seems determined to keep racing and finish out his contract. Froome hasn’t given up on the dream of winning one more race, but with each passing year, that seems more and more unlikely.
More big wins for Americans
This impressive generation of U.S. riders continues to perform across Europe.
Kristen Faulkner of EF Education-Cannondale is lighting up the spring, winning two stages, the points and climber’s jerseys, and finishing second to teammate Kim Cadzow at the Trofeo Ponente in Rosa.
Tyler Stites blasted to victory in Sunday’s Rhodes GP by Culture & Sports Organization, a 1.2 race in Greece that was a milestone victory both for him and his Conti-level Project Echelon team.
Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) was forced to abandon Tirreno-Adriatico due to knee pain, and officials said he will recover at home. Let’s hope it’s nothing serious as he’s poised for a breakout spring classics campaign.
Sunday was also big day in U.S.cycling history, with Jorgenson and McNulty sharing the Paris-Nice podium. The pair has been racing against each other since they were teens.
“We do go back quite aways, we had the same coach as juniors, and we did a lot of Europe trips together,” Jorgenson said. “I came over here to Europe at 14 with Brandon, and we were roommates, and we did a lot of kermesses. We got our first European experiences together, and we saw together that pro cycling was possible, so we do have a bit of a connection. I know Brandon well. As a kid, he was worlds stronger than me, he was a completely different level than me, and back then I would have never said I could beat him. I’ve caught up over the years.”
The best could be yet to come.
The spring classics campaign kicks into high gear with Milano-Sanremo, and American riders should be in the frame from here to Liège in the women’s and men’s racing in ways we haven’t seen in decades.
The current Big 4 of American pro men’s cycling is as good a group as we’ve had in a decade. It’s so exciting to see how this generation of American riders continues to grow.
American cycling is back to the fore in the pro ranks Europe. Now to get the pro ranks back in the US! pic.twitter.com/N42VflKqmV
— GC KUSS (@GCKUSSfan) March 10, 2024