The 24-year-old Californian Matteo Jorgenson was the epitome of cool, arriving on the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais as the only rider able to follow the rampaging Remco Evenepoel on the steep climbs around Nice. The two were 50 seconds clear, he knew he’d won the GC and he didn’t try too hard in the finale, allowing the Belgian former world champion to sprint around him and simultaneously a big smile to spread across his American face.
A measure of Jorgenson's confidence on that last stage was that he chose Visma-Lease a Bike’s aero bike, the Cervélo S5, and not the climbing bike, the Cervélo R5 here that James Startt photographed leaning up against the team bus with its fresh new tyres and race number. Maybe he just wanted to keep everyone guessing.
The stage included an ascent of the Col d’Eze – where Bradley Wiggins won the uphill time trial to win Paris-Nice 14 years ago – and the 15% Col des Quatre Chemins, but Jorgenson didn’t worry that the S5 doesn’t come close to troubling the UCI weight limit of 6.8kg. He knew he was strong enough.
Since the change of sponsor, with Lease a Bike now the headline name taking over from Jumbo, the paint scheme has also changed, but the black-and-yellow colour scheme stays. Instead of the blocks of yellow on black, now there are repeating yellow hexagons. The bike-leasing organisation doesn’t have this sort of pattern in its logo or design, so we have to assume it’s a reference to France, nicknamed l’Hexagone, and the Tour. It’s no secret that the team has designs on the French race this year, which Jonas Vingegaard has already won twice. A hexagon appeared on last year’s Jumbo-Visma team jersey; now it adorns the bike too.
Whereas the Cervélo S5 that Jorgenson chose for the final stage has the distinctive proprietary V Stem, the R5 here uses a more conventional configuration with a separate bar and stem. The FSA SL-K stem and K-Force bar do, however, hide the brake hoses via the ACR (aerodynamic cable routing) system. Jorgenson is using a HideMyBell outfront carbon Garmin mount in a team edition livery.
Visma-Lease a Bike are a SRAM team and even though photos of an upcoming new Red groupset have been leaked and you might reasonably expect to see it being ridden in pro races by now, this bike is fitted with the current iteration.
SRAM’s 12-speed AXS system with its 10t sprocket was designed to be ridden with smaller chainrings, but the pros have since gone back up to almost full-size ratios up front. Jorgenson is running 52/39 on a SRAM Red chainset with a Quarq power meter – Quarq has been a SRAM brand since 2011.
The pedals are Wahoo Speedplay Aero models, which are one-side only unlike the standard Speedplay Zero, and feature a dimpled underside that smoothly integrates with the Speedplay cleat housing and saves a claimed four watts. Wahoo is not an official team partner, so it’s a surprise that the team are not using Time pedals now that SRAM has acquired the French brand. SD Worx and world champion Lotte Kopecky are on Time pedals.
Meanwhile, Reserve is Cervélo’s own wheel brand and Visma’s bikes are fitted with a new wheelset that’s still unreleased with a 42mm rim up front and a 49mm at the rear, filling in a gap in the mid-depth line-up and balancing aero with lighter weight we imagine. The rims are ‘semi hooked’ – so not hookless, unlike the wheels that have prompted the UCI to investigate the technology following Thomas De Gendt’s crash at the UAE Tour.
The tyres are tubeless Vittoria Corsa Pros in a 700x28c size, which are the same tyres De Gendt was using when he crashed, but obviously there aren’t the same limits on tyre pressure with hooked rims as there are with hookless. The maximum as recommended by ETRTO is 73psi but for tubeless with rims, which is Jorgenson’s setup here, Vittoria recommends 95psi max or 115psi with tubes.
While we may not see this bike as frequently as we see the Cervélo S5, its seems certain that we will be seeing a lot more of Matteo Jorgenson this year.
