Short process in the mountains: Jonas Vingegaard (in the blue jersey) got serious at the Tirreno (March 10, 2024)
Fortunately, the best ranking riders in men’s road cycling are spreading their winning intentions more widely again, instead of focusing only on the Grand Tours and their immediate preparation races – as was usual for one or two gloomy decades. This means, for example, that Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma – Lease a Bike) was fully committed to winning at the start of the season. At the end of February, the tour winner of the last two years won both the overall ranking of O Gran Camiño and three of four stages for the second time in a row. It was therefore foreseeable that the 27-year-old Dane would not treat his first race of the season in the World Tour category as a casual opportunity to build up his form.
Initially, Vingegaard fell short of expectations at the 59th Tirreno–Adriatico in the opening time trial won by Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates). On the following three days, as on the final Sunday, he naturally stayed out of the mass sprints, in which the 23-year-old Italian Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) won twice, and once the Dutchman Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), who was three years older than him, won last winner in the points classification of the Giro d’Italia and the Tour. The 29-year-old German veteran Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain-Victorious) secured a fourth sprint.
On the first mountain stage, Vingegaard made short work of the competition by letting his team set a hell of a pace on the hardest climb and then rode 29 kilometers solo to win the day. With a lead of just under a minute in the overall standings, he was able to wait for an opportunity to counterattack on Saturday. That came when Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe), the 27-year-old Australian Giro winner from 2022, attacked on the final climb, which encouraged the Dane to explosively accelerate and take his second solo victory a few hundred meters later. Like the day before, Ayuso, the 21-year-old Spanish Vuelta third in 2022, defeated Hindley in a two-man sprint for second place, which also foreshadowed the final classification.
While Vingegaard celebrated his first Tirreno victory as the top favorite, the triumph that his colleagues achieved at the simultaneous 82nd Paris-Nice event came rather unexpectedly. This does not apply to the two victories that the 22-year-old Dutchman Olav Kooij won in the sprint, while a third sprint victory went to his 29-year-old compatriot Arvid de Kleijn (Tudor Pro Cycling Team). No, the surprise was that Matteo Jorgenson secured the lead jersey on the final Sunday in the first race in which Team Visma – Lease a Bike had made him captain.
The 24-year-old American was attentive on the first day when he scored the maximum bonus seconds in the intermediate sprint. On the hilly sixth stage he even broke away alone on the last categorized climb after Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe) attempted an attack. Jorgenson then had to admit defeat to 23-year-old Dane Mattias Skjelmose Jensen (Lidl-Trek), who caught up with second-placed Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) 25 kilometers from the finish. However, the Visma newcomer initially improved to second place overall behind his 25-year-old compatriot McNulty, who had already temporarily worn the leadership jersey thanks to winning the team time trial and ultimately came third overall.
The 24-year-old Belgian superstar recognized that Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) did not react promptly to Jorgenson’s attack and ended up 52 seconds behind the chasing group as a “big tactical mistake”. Two days earlier he had already been duped when he unintentionally let a colleague prepare an attack from the competition, which the 24-year-old Colombian Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain-Victorious) used to win the stage. It didn’t help much that Evenepoel came second on Saturday – at the same time as Jorgenson – after his attack on the hardest final climb of the race week was countered by the victorious 27-year-old Russian Alexander Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe). Nevertheless, one could believe that the 2022 Vuelta winner was happy about his stage success the following day, as his half-minute deficit in the overall classification could hardly be made up after Jorgenson was the only competitor who managed to parry three of the Belgian’s attacks on the penultimate climb. The runner-up overall was also comforted by the fact that another Tour aspirant experienced a fiasco at his season opener: Roglič was over four minutes behind on Sunday.
