Matteo Jorgenson used to hate Jumbo-Visma.

He can remember days, racing for his former team Movistar, when the “Killer Bees” buzzed on the front bunch for their leader and ruthlessly swarmed any breakaway bids.

That made the 2023 Tour de France difficult after team leader Enric Mas crashed out on the opening day. In one fell swoop, their key focus was gone.

Jorgenson ended up occasionally feeling disconnected from the race, having as he describes, “no objective.”

“And those are the worst days because you know you’re going to get dropped, you’re waiting for it to happen. Everything hurts more,” he said. “Looking around, thinking what are we here for?”

What a difference a year makes.

Now Jorgenson is one of Visma-Lease a Bike’s most important riders and loves their way of working and racing.

Rather than getting shelled, he is the one dropping the bombs rivals left, right and center.

As a winner in his own right or when riding on the front for grand tour supremo Jonas Vingegaard, Jorgenson stepped up in a huge way in 2024.

Inside the spring that changed Jorgenson’s career

The 25-year-old hit the ground running, winning Paris-Nice in March by getting the better of Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step).

He went toe-to-toe with the Belgian prodigy on the race’s final stage into his adopted home city.

“In general, it’s been perfect,” he told Velo of a 2024 season that has exceeded expectations. “I think achieving that [Paris-Nice win] at the beginning of the year set a tone that was really helpful for the rest of it.

“I’ve been riding with a different self-confidence since then and raced completely differently, and felt differently about training and the sport.”

Jorgenson went on to take victory at Dwars door Vlaanderen weeks later, showing his wild versatility, stepping up to the plate  hours after teammate Wout van Aert crashed out.

After hitting second at the Critérium du Dauphiné, he was far from without goals as Jonas Vingegaard’s last domestique in the high mountains of the Tour de France.

He supported the Dane to a stage win at Le Lioran and second place overall, serving as Goose to his Top Gun.

‘Having an objective every single day’

When let off the leash late in the race himself, he came within two kilometers of winning stage 19 to Isola 2000 on an all-action attack. He was denied by an attack behind from (who else?) Tadej Pogačar.

Nevertheless, the ride set up him up to finish eighth overall.

“Being on this team, I enjoyed it so much more having an objective very single day. Having a job you’re supposed to do that day. And it’s so much better, the time goes by faster. It’s hard, it’s challenging, but it’s worlds better for me, at least, than it was in the past,” he said.

The cherry on top of the cake was ninth place in his debut Olympic road race two weeks later for Team USA.

Little surprise then that Jorgenson was one of ten riders nominated for the Vélo d’Or award last week, the annual prize recognising the season’s best-performing rider.

No more wasted energy

Change has sure been a good thing for Jorgenson.

In the past, the American has made the winter 2023 switch of teams sound like night and day, telling Velo that “literally every single thing changed”.

That boils down to putting high performance first and foremost, different coaching, training and a fine tooth-comb approach to tactics, taken by team management.

If Idahoan had to pinpoint one thing that has helped him the most, it’s nutrition.

The team’s FoodCoach app system has changed the game for him.

It involves chefs calculating their energy balance to make sure every meal is correct, based on the energy expended in training or races.

If a training ride emerges at a few watts higher than expected, it is adjusted accordingly.

“Maintaining a perfect diet the whole year – well at least until the end of the Olympics, after that, I went a little rogue,” he said. “But having enough energy to do the training every day and get the adaptations necessary, doing that and stacking months of doing that together has helped me improve so much.

“I think it’s just the consistency of your body knowing there’s energy available. I would say that’s the biggest change.”

In the past with Movistar, Jorgenson would get home from a training ride and spend his afternoon calculating what to eat for dinner to maintain his weight.

Taking a do-it-yourself approach which paid dividends, he also spent the majority of his salary hiring a nutritionist and spending a month at an altitude hotel in 2023.

These are just some of the changes he made, detailed in a thread on the social media platform X.

Now, such thinking is taken care of for him. He can focus far more on pedaling, positioning and drinking the recovery-aiding cherry juice handed to him at the finish.

Visma-Lease a Bike believes ‘Jorgenson can do grand tour GC’

Jorgenson has fit right into the Visma-Lease a Bike model and their way of working. Every year of his fledging career, he has improved. It is intriguing to see how much further he can go in 2025.

Having won Paris-Nice, second at the Dauphiné, and eighth at the Tour de France, is going for grand tour GC something for 2025?

“I do not know, the team has to make their plans and then they present it to me,” he says. “I’d have a say in it, I guess, but I don’t really get to decide that.”

“I know that they believe I can do it, they’ve already told me. But I don’t know when it’s going to be and it’s not concerning to me so much. I have no rush to do it next year.”