'Mission bionic arm successful' for Matteo Jorgenson but Visma-Lease a Bike left with very few options for remaining Ardennes

Visma-Lease a Bike leader Matteo Jorgenson appeared to confirm that he had successful surgery on the broken collarbone he sustained in a crash at Amstel Gold Race on Sunday, which has taken him out of the remaining Ardennes Classics.

"Mission bionic arm successful," Jorgenson posted to his Instagram story on Monday evening, alongside a photo of him outside the BovenIJ hospital in Amsterdam, his right arm in a sling under his jumper.

"Thank you for all the messages! I feel the love. Shit happens and that's what make[s] life beautiful :) Onwards!" he wrote.

Jorgenson had planned his spring campaign around the Ardennes Classics, skipping the cobbles in Belgium in favour of this week of racing, and had just returned from altitude training to race Amstel Gold Race.

However, his Ardennes week came to an abrupt end when Kévin Vauquelin (Ineos Grenadiers) slid out on a corner in front of him with 40km, causing the American also to hit the ground hard. His team later confirmed that he had suffered a fractured collarbone.

Despite undergoing surgery and the return from collarbone fractures often being relatively quick with the help of plating, Jorgenson will miss Wednesday's Flèche Wallonne and Sunday's Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

"Everyone could see that Matteo was in great form, so it’s very frustrating that our race ended this way," Visma directeur sportif Frans Maassen said.

In Jorgenson's absence, his Visma-Lease a Bike team are left scrambling for a leader for the Ardennes Classics, with their Grand Tour star Jonas Vingegaard yet to follow in the footsteps of Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel and add any one-day racing to his programme.

In previous years, they may have also counted on Simon Yates, but he called time on his career in January. As a result, the Dutch team will likely look to young and relatively inexperienced riders for their chances for results on Wednesday and Sunday.

Even before Jorgenson's crash, Britain's Ben Tulett was touted as a secondary leader for Visma, but illness forced him out of Amstel at the weekend, and it is not yet clear if he will return for Flèche and Liège. Louis Barré is also still struggling with illness.

Instead, the team have pointed to 21-year-old Jørgen Nordhagen as a possible leader. The Norwegian climber comes to the Ardennes off the back of a strong second place overall at O Gran Camiño, beaten only by Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), but he is still only a second-year WorldTour pro. He rode one Ardennes race in 2025, Flèche, where he finished 25th.

Third at last year's Tour de l'Avenir and eighth overall at the UAE Tour this year, Nordhagen has no lack of climbing strength, but is still a very young and new rider to be thrown into leadership in some big Classics.

Speaking to Het Laaste Nieuws at the weekend, Visma DS Maarten Wynants also ruled out bringing any of the Giro d'Italia team into the Ardennes at the last moment, or calling up Paris-Roubaix winner Wout van Aert, who has just returned from a post-Classics holiday.

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