Stage 1 of Paris-Nice was just the third race day of the season for Matteo Jorgenson, riding in his new Visma-Lease a Bike colours, and it was a solid day at the office for the young team leader. The 24-year-old rider from the United States may have gone unnoticed with 15th in the swarm of riders crossing the finish line together in Les Mureaux, but he joined his teammate and stage winner Olav Kooij on the first GC podium of the eight-day race.
While Kooij stole the spotlight for his sprint victory and a trifecta of award jerseys – overall, points and youth classifications – Jorgenson was satisfied with a late-race move where he collected pivotal bonus seconds.
He sat third in the overall standings, within four seconds of Kooij, at the end of the opening day of racing. Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), who was second on the stage in a margin just short of a photo finish, was tied on time with the Idaho native and held second overall.
“It’ll be aggressive,” was how Jorgenson summed up the next seven days of racing at Paris-Nice, as he finds himself among the titans of the ‘race to the sun’, which include World Champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) 2023 Giro d’Italia champion Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe), who won Paris-Nice in 2022, and Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), the 2019 Paris-Nice winner.
Jorgenson said the key part of the race for him came at the 140-kilometre mark, at the bonus sprint at Montainville with 18km to go. The short uncategorised climb (0.7km at 8.1%) offered the only intermediate sprint of the stage at its crest.
“It wasn’t my intention before the stage to go for the bonus seconds. I thought, for sure, Primoz [Roglič] and Remco [Evenepoel] were up there. I was basically third or fourth in the corner. I think Moscon or someone from QuickStep did a little bit of a leadout for [the intermediate sprint]. I just went for it and I was actually surprised that I got it,” Jorgenson said after the finish.
“But yeah, Mick [Van Dijke] did a super good job into the corner. I was there, so I didn’t look back.”
Evenepoel was second across the sprint line, having used a lead-out by teammate Casper Pedersen, and Bernal was third, each eager to scoop up as many seconds as possible. From there, Jorgenson said the stage was a bit of a frenzy as the momentum carried him, Evenepoel and Bernal to a small gap over the field. Now they had to deal with a final category 3 climb, Côte d’Herbeville, just 5.5km from the Montainville…
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