Post finish line crash adds 'insult to injury' for Jorgenson and Visma at E3

In the end, Visma-Lease a Bike’s day at E3 Saxo Classic was summed up not by anything that happened in the race itself, but by an incident beyond the finish line.

Riding back to the team bus, Matteo Jorgenson, the fifth place finisher, was sent crashing to the deck.

“I was behind a rider from another team who didn’t look back and just turned to his bus immediately, without looking, and completely took me out,” the US rider explained, adding that he came away relatively unscathed.

“We were going 15km/h… it’s more just insult to injury, more than anything.”

That more general sense of injury occurred over 207 bruising kilometres in what’s often referred to as a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the Tour of Flanders. Visma-Lease a Bike, so dominant and dictating at the Opening Weekend a month ago, were forced onto the back foot as Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) tested them with a series of accelerations.

However, keen to swat away the idea that they’d been dismantled by the world champion, the team pointed out the litany of misfortunes that befell them in the Flemish Ardennes.

“The feeling in the car was, 'ah shit, what has happened today?'” said the team’s sports director, Arthur van Dongen.

The tone was set in the opening kilometres as the team’s young talent Per Strand Hagenes, crashed out with a head injury. Former Paris-Roubaix winner Dylan van Baarle then suffered a series of mechanical issues ahead of the crucial climb of the Taaienberg, and Tiesj Benoot crashed out while the race was still wide open with 50km to go.

The final nail in the coffin

However, the “final nail in the coffin”, as Jorgenson put it, came on the Paterberg, just as Van der Poel was launching what would turn out to be the winning move. Team leader Wout van Aert, looking to nip around riders to follow, lost his front wheel on the ridge between the gutter and the cobblestones, and went down.

“We had a lot of unfortunate events happen in a row, and we slowly lost the strength of our team throughout the day. We almost saved it actually, we almost pulled it together, but the nail in the coffin was when Wout crashed on the Paterberg - that kind of ended our race.”

Having previously tested the waters in an open and fluid race, Jorgenson’s job then boiled down to launching Van Aert on a rescue mission.

“I had to manage the group in front, make sure nothing got away, and wait for him to get back. Once he was back, I just set a pace on the Kwaremont to get us closer to Mathieu, hoping he’d be able to get across.”

A rampaging Van Aert indeed left everyone else behind to close within 15 seconds, but Van der Poel squeezed again on the Karnemelkbeekstraat and the elastic was stretched to breaking point. Van Aert was eventually caught and out-sprinted by Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek), while Jorgenson took fifth in the finale after describing himself as so “frozen” he could barely pedal.

Question marks

The big question mark at the finish in Harelbeke, was whether Van Aert could have matched, or even had the beating of, Van der Poel, had he stayed up right.

“We think he could have matched him. That’s my feeling anyway,” said Van Dongen.

“I still think it was a really good race from Wout. Our performance staff will check the numbers and they’ll know it.”

The other question mark is whether Visma-Lease a Bike could have outmanoeuvred Van der Poel without the bad luck, or whether the world champion’s startling individual strength might be too much even for their superior strength in depth.

“Mathieu was outstanding and the best of today,” Van Dongen acknowledged. “But in the case where we have more numbers, we can play a different game.”

The thing is, the squad has taken a hell of a beating. Van Aert was complaining of pain on his right-hand side, while Benoot has "a lot of bruises and pain in the ribs" and is unsure if he'll be fit for the next races. Meanwhile, Christophe Laporte missed E3 with an illness that looks set to keep him from Gent-Wevelgem and leave him with a deficit ahead of the crucial Tour of Flanders next Sunday.

Van Dongen pointed out that taking 3rd and 5th place was a lot better than most teams could manage, but this was a very troublesome day indeed for the team who'd looked set to rule the spring.