When will Jorgenson choose a specialization at Visma | Lease a Bike? "It will happen naturally"

From the very start of 2024, Visma | Lease a Bike set two main goals: winning the Tour de France with Jonas Vingegaard and achieving Monumental victories with Wout van Aert. They fell short on both due to numerous injuries affecting both riders. Unexpectedly, Matteo Jorgenson emerged as the standout. Expectations are now very high for the American, but the Dutch team is not putting any pressure on the 25-year-old all-rounder.

Dutchman Tim Heemskerk, a trainer with the team, enjoys working with Jorgenson, especially because of the climber-slash-time trialist’s versatility. Jorgenson won Dwars door Vlaanderen and Paris-Nice, took second in the Dauphiné, and finished eighth in the Tour — a solid array of achievements. "He’s still developing. Over the next few years, we may see him naturally lean towards a particular focus, like truly aiming for a classics victory or a grand tour," Heemskerk said.

Read more below the photo.

Matteo Jorgenson on the climb to Isola 2000 in the Tour de France

Jorgenson himself enjoys the variety: "He also finds it very enjoyable"

In an interview with Vélo, Heemskerk elaborated on Jorgenson’s training. "We don’t want to try to focus him on any one thing just yet. We might only do that if we see he could really, really benefit from specializing. We’re still discovering Matteo’s capacities. He just had an amazing season by doing a bit of everything, and he enjoys it. So for now, while he’s only 25, why change that? We want to keep Matteo’s calendar open for now."

What will shape Jorgenson's future path? According to Heemskerk, that’s still undecided. "Matteo’s direction will depend on how he grows with us, but also on management and how we need to fill roles for our plans. We’ll need to all agree it’s the right direction. But we’re not at the time to need to do that yet. Physiologically, Matteo can switch from classics to stage races, but it’s difficult for us to manage. It’s certainly a lot more complicated than with Jonas, for example. We managed to juggle and keep all those balls in the air this year. Now we have the data and the learnings, we can understand how to do it better next year. We can bring in lots of new ideas for Matteo’s training but we cannot do it all in one year. So we know for sure there is more to come," the coach said optimistically.

Read also

Pogacar and Zigart make each other better: "Tadej thinks I sacrifice a lot more for us, but that's just not true"

France questions superhuman performance of Pogacar and Vingegaard: "They cycled in anonymity in the junior category"

🎥 Dutch super cyclist Van der Poel beats a rally car in a spectacular duel in Spain!