Matteo Jorgenson interview: ‘We don't have regrets with how we've raced'

New York Times

2 days ago

In the weeks before the 2025 Tour de France, Matteo Jorgenson's partner made him a leather journal. It has lived in his rucksack throughout July.
On the eve of the race, the American rider shared two of its pages, listing each of his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates in turn.
'A leader by example,' reads the entry for Jonas Vingegaard. 'Beautiful pedal stroke and one of the strongest people I know. Can suffer more than anyone else. A father and partner before bike rider.'
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Next comes Victor Campenaerts. 'The most committed rider in the sport. Will win any corner and any drag race. A man of the people. Wears his helmet in the shower and leaves his (sun)glasses in the case.'
On it goes, with eight entries in all — a paragraph for each of his seven teammates, plus directeur sportif Grischa Niermann. Edoardo Affini: 'A man of few words but many watts.' Fellow American Sepp Kuss: 'As long as his cleats and saddle heights are adjusted, I couldn't find a more stable guy.' Belgian superstar Wout van Aert: 'Irreplaceable and brings every teammate up with him.'
Elite sport is often an arena where its practitioners are forced to put up barriers. In the hours ahead of the biggest race of the season, this felt refreshingly vulnerable.
'I make notes before every race of all the key points I need to be at and what the parcours (race route) looks like,' he tells The Athletic on the Tour's second rest day. 'But this year, I wanted to do it specifically for the Tour, so it had its own journal, and also so I could look back at it and think: 'Wow, this is what I did.' If I ever want to look back at a specific day, I know what I wrote down before.
'Before the race, I was just reflecting, taking a minute to sit with where I was at. In a way, I think it's possible that I'll never race with a stronger team than the one I'm racing with here. The guys that I'm with every day are the best riders in the world, and that may never happen again in my whole career. So I wanted to take a minute and appreciate that.'
Remaining grounded is important. Jorgenson is a key part of Visma's strengths — Vingegaard's key lieutenant in the mountains, one of the race's strongest climbers, and entering as a possible general classification contender himself. With six stages left, however, Vingegaard trails Tadej Pogačar by four minutes and 12 seconds. Jorgenson sits 15th.
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'In terms of executing our plan, it's been really good,' he says. 'We've been really strong as a collective team — it's been enjoyable being at the front of the race, and every day having an objective.
'But then, results-wise, it hasn't been what we've wanted. We don't have regrets with how we've raced; we've so far tried our best to get the upper hand. I think only winning one stage, and then being beaten by Pogačar at every turn has been hard to accept.'
It is in moments like this that levity proves its worth. Alongside Campenaerts, Jorgenson has recorded videos on the team bus every day, previewing the stage and joking with their teammates. Jorgenson provides a fact about each place they are riding. The previous day's? Start town Muret was the birthplace of Jean Gauban, who participated in the first ever edition of the Tour in 1903. In 1906, he was one of the riders who cheated by jumping on a train, midway through the stage. 'It's a pretty legendary move,' Jorgenson laughs, adjusting his cleats.
This year, Jorgenson is making a conscious effort to engage with his surroundings. Is it a performance factor — does being relaxed lead to better riding?
'In previous years, I've gone through the Tour de France, and also other races, and when you get done with it, you try to think back to the memories and it's almost hard to remember what happened. It's so stressful, and if you really allow the race to take over your brain, then it's everything you think about every second.
'As silly as it sounds, I want to know where I'm at, to understand where we're actually going, and to embrace the fact that we're doing one of the world's biggest sporting events. That's really cool. I want memories from this race other than: 'This climb is really painful' or 'I got dropped here'. I wanted to have a really good month with my friends, and I think I can do that while also performing at my absolute best. I think they're complementary in a way. If I'm enjoying it, I also perform better.'
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Another part of his process is planning. Some riders prefer to lessen their mental load by entering stages blind, but for their DS' instructions. Jorgenson is not one of those — for him, the preparation itself is calming.
'Cycling has so many uncertainties that my brain doesn't do super well with that,' he explains. 'Sometimes you might have 200km, and you have no idea of any of it, other than that there is a mountain towards the end. For me, that doesn't work. I guess I have higher anxiety about things I can't control.
'So every race, I at least go through the process of looking through the race, especially VeloViewer (a website that provides 3D map information along with ride analysis).
'I'll try to chunk it out, into break formation in the first part of the race, a middle part where it's more calm, which some days we won't have, and then the final key points, often with actual kilometers where I need to be at the front, or where others might attack.'
On Tuesday, the first stage after the rest day, the peloton will take on Mont Ventoux. Alongside Alpe d'Huez, it is arguably the most famous climb to regularly feature at the Tour de France.
'Tomorrow, there will probably be a long period of break formation because a lot of people will want to be in the break,' Jorgenson explains. 'So I'd look at the first 50km of the race, and see if there are any villages where it narrows, or little kickers which might split the group up, or where a break might go.
'Then I want to look at the approach running into it, to see at what point I actually need to be at the front. It might be 10km before the climb that you already need to be at the front, because after that it's all small roads, for example.
'On the climb itself, I already know it quite well, but I'd know that the first 10km or so are in the forest and quite steep. And then the last part is exposed, so I'd check that too. Then, on a typical stage, I'd look at the final five kilometers pretty closely to make sure I know about all the corners, and I know in my head how they flow, so in the race it's automatic. You don't want to be looking down at your Garmin and thinking, 'Is there a corner coming up?', with one kilometer to go.'
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Listening to Jorgenson, it is clear how WorldTour cycling can be all-consuming. The days are long, a decent condition must be retained throughout the off-season, tactics spiral, equipment can always be optimised — the sport exposes itself to obsession, both its benefits and its drawbacks.
'It is,' Jorgenson agrees. 'It's becoming, in my view, even more so as the years go by, because we all constantly figure out new ways that you can improve your performance and those ways are basically all now off the bike, things you can be doing at home.
'The demands get higher on the rider and I think it's up to you as a rider to set your own boundaries of how far that's going to go. In the past, I've been quite bad about that — I haven't done a good job of having any balance between a normal life and cycling life.
'I have lived literally 24-7 with performance in mind — from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, every decision I make is has has my performance in mind all year round. That can get super exhausting. So it's been a process of learning what things are really important, that I want to maintain doing, and also what parts of a performance lifestyle I can make automatic and not feel like an effort.
'Really strong routines of sleep and eating, I've been trying to make those low cost to me. Then all these extras like altitude and heat training, these things that cost me a lot of energy, I think I can pick and choose when I use them — when I want to really invest and be at a super high level, or when I can be OK with being a few percentage points down.'
Over the past two years, writing has become one way to deal with the stresses of the professional lifestyle — 'When my hand is moving, my brain is too — I write down things which I didn't even know I was thinking, which says a lot about how my brain works.'
It is important to separate identity from results, but there is space to be analytical about results too. This Tour has not gone perfectly for Visma, finding themselves longshots for overall victory — but team leader Vingegaard is still punchy about his chances of success.
'I still think I can win,' he told reporters on Monday.
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But to win, Visma must put time into current yellow jersey Pogačar, who has been in irrepressible form this race.
'The hard part is, he's not only the strongest rider in the world, but also he's really, really smart and races super well,' explains Jorgenson. 'I think he's grown a lot as a rider so it's proven very difficult to beat him.'
At times this Tour, the pair have butted heads. Pogačar criticised Visma's tactics in the first week, while Jorgenson and Pogačar had an altercation at a feed station during stage seven. Pogačar appeared to manhandle Jorgenson out of his way, later accusing the American of blocking his path to a bottle.
On stage 15, Pogačar marked Jorgenson's attacks in a manner that felt personal — a rider who was 32 minutes down on GC would usually be allowed to join a break. Pogačar later claimed he was frustrated that Visma's riders weren't waiting for Vingegaard to return to the bunch after a crash, with the race leader having slowed the peloton. But does this unease stem from tight, competitive racing, or some other enmity?
'I've been trying to figure it out myself,' says Jorgenson. 'Two days before this race, I ran into him on the roads around Nice. We chatted for a long time, and I felt like we were totally fine. But since the race has started, I've felt intensity from him.
'I can't point to any incident in particular — it's confused me. I tried to talk with him yesterday on the bike, and didn't really get anything back other than what he said in the press conference. I think in the first 10 days of the race, he probably felt threatened and annoyed that we were trying to beat him, in a way. I understand that, when he thinks of himself as the strongest rider, but I also hope he can see that we are just trying our best to beat them and win the race, and it's nothing against him personally.
'But it's a Tour de France — if he's not going to be challenged then it would be a really boring event.'
Heading into the race, Jorgenson was tipped by some as a possible podium contender. Now 32 minutes down after cracking on stage 12 to Hautacam, the GC was never his primary goal — but the 26-year-old has also been open about his aspirations to one day lead Visma at a Grand Tour.
'This time around, it was really about doing GC in terms of being close enough to Pogačar that he has to chase me down (if I attack),' he explains. 'If we could use that somewhere as a tactical advantage it would be really, really helpful, so that was what my goal was.
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'We spoke after stage 11 about making that decision, whether to hold on to the position or disconnect and go for stage wins — but on stage 12 I had such a bad day that it was quite clear I was not going to fight for the podium on GC.
'For sure, I could have held on and kept fighting for a top 10, but last year I was eighth here, and I wasn't really passionate about fighting every day for another result like that, especially if it comes at the cost of stage wins. Nowadays, if you're racing in the group with Pogačar, there is a 0.01 per cent chance you'll win a stage — so I decided after Hautacam to lose time and try to go for stages. Tomorrow (on Ventoux) is another good opportunity for a breakaway.'
Jorgenson has won two editions of Paris-Nice, but never a Grand Tour stage before. It would be one of the crowing achievements of a cycling career that began in Boise, Idaho, with the BYRDS cycling squad. His parents were not cyclists themselves; instead, Jorgenson began riding aged six with his brother. 'It's always been part of my life,' he explains.
As he speaks, fellow American Kuss is sat just 15 meters away — between the pair, they are two-fifths of the U.S. riders at the race and, along with Lidl-Trek's Quinn Simmons and EF Education-EasyPost's Neilson Powless, are the country's most high-profile riders in the peloton. But this is still a relatively low number. How can the pathway improve?
'In my view, the challenge right now is that there's no professional road races in the U.S.,' Jorgenson says. 'Taking away the other disciplines — mountain biking is growing really well — road cycling has been on the decline.
'The rise of gravel has created a way safer alternative, because road cycling in the U.S. is inherently dangerous — there's big roads and not much road density, so you can't find quiet places to ride across much of the country. And so that's definitely drawing people to gravel, which for me is a shame, because it's also caused some of the disappearance of the big races.
'I obviously watched the Tour de France as a kid, my parents had it on in summer when I was a really small child, but my parents also took me to the Tour of California, because my grandpa lived in Solvang, where they had a time trial. Seeing a bike race in person, seeing the riders, asking for autographs — my parents still have a jersey that was signed by a bunch of people — and that was a pivotal moment.
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'Somewhere in my brain I went, 'This is something that I want to do', at a young age. And not having that now, not having any way that kids can connect cycling as a realistic thing that exists, and not just something they see on the television in Europe, means something is missing. It's hard to imagine young American kids wanting to be road bikers when there are zero races around them in America.'
Jorgenson has to leave by 10am — the Visma squad are all heading out on a short rest day ride. In his journal, there is a paragraph on each of them. What would Jorgenson want them to write about him?
He pauses. 'I don't know,' he slowly replies, with less certainty than he speaks of his teammates. 'Just that I'm fully committed to what I'm doing.
'Hopefully they feel like I'm bringing the team up, in some way. To be bringing positive energy — and boosting the guys around me.'