{"id":637229,"date":"2026-06-13T21:15:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/637229\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T21:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:15:14","slug":"blow-for-matteo-jorgenson-as-illness-in-visma-lease-a-bike-camp-leaves-him-with-just-three-teammates-at-tour-auvergne-rhone-alpes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/637229\/","title":{"rendered":"Blow for Matteo Jorgenson as illness in Visma-Lease a Bike camp leaves him with just three teammates at Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Wout van Aert’s exit<\/a> on Friday morning, Visma-Lease a Bike have been further depleted at the Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes<\/a>, losing two riders to illness ahead of stage 7.<\/p>\n

J\u00f8rgen Nordhagen, who climbed impressively on Friday’s opening mountain stage, is a non-starter on Saturday’s stage, and the same goes for the Classics specialist Per Strand Hagenes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Both riders developed symptoms of illness overnight,” read a statement from Visma-Lease a Bike<\/a>. “We wish Per and J\u00f8rgen a speedy recovery.”<\/p>\n

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The news is a blow for the team’s US leader, Matteo Jorgenson,<\/a> as he fights for the podium in the weekend’s blockbuster mountain finale.<\/p>\n

With seven riders at the start of the race, Visma are down to four, leaving Jorgenson without much support and without his closest ally in the mountains.<\/p>\n

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Nordhagen, the 21-year-old Norwegian climber who was an impressive fourth at the Tour de Romandie last month, had done much of Friday’s final climb alongside Jorgenson, finishing 13 seconds behind his leader and ahead of a number of other GC candidates.<\/p>\n

There have been reports of widespread illness at the race formerly known as the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9, with Movistar boss Eusebio Unzu\u00e9 talking of a flu outbreak as he also lost several riders.<\/p>\n

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The Armirail GC factor<\/p>\n

Jorgenson has three teammates left by his side: the British puncheur Ben Tullett, the Italian rouleur Adoardo Affini, and the French all-rounder Bruno Armirail.<\/p>\n

Armirail is the most interesting of those teammates, given he rose to second overall after Friday’s breakaway antics produced some surprising and potentially significant changes on GC.<\/p>\n

Armirail is 1:22 ahead of fourth-placed Jorgenson, who, himself, thanks to Visma’s team time trial win, still has 32 seconds in hand on pre-race favourite Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM).<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

The Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes intensifies on Saturday with a double ascent of the Grand Colombier, before finishing with a bang on Sunday’s explosive four-col mountain stage.<\/p>\n

“When you see the parcours that’s coming up, it’s going to be very, very complicated,” Armirail said of a possible personal GC bid. “Even if I get over climbs well, I’m not a pure climber. Matteo is the priority.”<\/p>\n

Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes and Tour de Suisse coverage. Don’t miss any of the breaking news, race analysis, and expert insight as the riders make their final preparations for Le Tour. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Wout van Aert’s exit on Friday morning, Visma-Lease a Bike have been further depleted at the Tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-637229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}