{"id":801374,"date":"2026-07-14T13:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T13:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/801374\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T13:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T13:39:13","slug":"jorgenson-is-frustrated-with-his-own-role-in-the-tour-de-france-surrounding-vingegaard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/801374\/","title":{"rendered":"Jorgenson is frustrated with his own role in the Tour de France surrounding Vingegaard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matteo Jorgenson<\/a> doesn\u2019t look back on the first week of the Tour de France with much optimism. The 27-year-old American watched as his team leader lost nearly 3 minutes on Stage 6 over the Col du Tourmalet<\/a>. But it was especially his own legs that didn\u2019t perform as Jorgenson would have liked during the opening week. IDL Pro Cycling spoke with him.We caught up with Jorgenson before the start of Stage 9, when the temperature in Malemort had already climbed above 40 degrees. It seemed as though the Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> climber was hardly bothered by it anymore. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough Tour de France; I can\u2019t immediately recall a tougher edition. This is definitely the hottest one,\u201d he said.Jorgenson: ‘Always been more of a cold-weather rider’<\/p>\n

And it was (and is) precisely the heat that gave Jorgenson trouble during the first week. While he still played a leading role in the team time trial on Day 1 as one of the team\u2019s driving forces, he didn\u2019t play a role in the final stages of the explosive Stages 2 and 3. \u201cThe heat has a really bad effect on me. I\u2019ve always been more of a cold-weather rider.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not ideal, in a Tour de France where temperatures have consistently exceeded 35 degrees in the first nine stages, and the forecasts for the second week don\u2019t promise much improvement either. \u201cIt\u2019s a challenge to deal with, though I managed the last few stages better and was able to conserve some energy. I didn\u2019t have to push myself as hard anymore, so that\u2019s a good sign heading into the second and third weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo<\/p>\n

\"matteo-jorgenson-2\"\/<\/p>\n

Matteo Jorgenson on the Col du Tourmalet<\/p>\n

Jorgenson and Vingegaard still believe they can beat\u00a0Tadej Poga\u010darLast year, Jorgenson<\/a> was still the shadow team leader for Visma | Lease a Bike at the Tour de France, but the American started this edition without any personal ambitions. He wanted to ride entirely in support of Vingegaard and therefore did not join the breakaway in Stage 9. \u201cIf we\u2019re in the lead group, it\u2019s for defensive reasons. We\u2019re only focused on Jonas\u2019s general classification.\u201d<\/p>\n

After nine stages, the Danish leader trails Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates-XRG) by 2.42 minutes, but he remains the most important\u2014and only\u2014asset for the entire Visma | Lease a Bike team. \u201cJonas leads by example. The way he takes on the best rider of all time\u2014he believes in himself, fights for it every day, and wants to stay as close as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hope is that Vingegaard will improve even further and that Pogacar might weaken a bit. \u201cJonas truly believes he can beat Tadej, and I appreciate that about him. We all believe in that, and it\u2019s great to see. On the Tourmalet, we could only have supported him if we\u2019d been in the breakaway earlier in the stage, but the sprinter teams prevented that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"matteo-jorgenson\"\/Jorgenson had less than ideal start to the Tour de FranceVisma | Lease a Bike opened the 2026 Tour de France strongly in Barcelona with a stage win by Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>. Matteo Jorgenson, once the team\u2019s second leader, lost two and a half minutes, but future Head of Racing Marc Reef said this was not a setback, emphasizing the stage win as the priority.The team\u2019s strategy used powerful riders on the flats, then handed over on the climbs to Jorgenson early and later to climbers Sepp Kuss and Davide Piganzoli, who finished 1:58 and 0:28 behind Vingegaard. Reef said the plan was designed to keep Vingegaard fresh, and it succeeded.
\n Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matteo Jorgenson doesn\u2019t look back on the first week of the Tour de France with much optimism. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,5900,47944,82,262636,10761],"class_list":["post-801374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-matteo-jorgenson","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france-2026","tag-visma-lease-a-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}