Jorgenson Skips Paris-Roubaix to Target Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Ardennes Classics
Matteo Jorgenson has confirmed that Paris-Roubaix will not feature on his 2026 schedule, with the American instead pivoting his entire spring programme towards the Ardennes Classics and a primary target of Liège-Bastogne-Liège on April 26. The Visma-Lease a Bike rider explained that the decision reflects a deliberate shift in how he and the team want to build his spring, prioritising the longer, hillier one-day races over the brutality of the cobblestones.
"In 2026 I'll skip a few of the Flemish races and focus more on the hilly classics," Jorgenson told reporters during a pre-season team camp. "Ideally, I'd like to ride all the spring classics, but if you really want to perform well in the Ardennes, you have to make choices. One of my main goals in the spring is Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a race I'm hugely excited about. I feel that this type of race, with longer climbs, suits me better."
The decision represents a significant calendar restructuring for a rider who has shown himself capable across multiple terrains. Jorgenson finished in the top twenty at Paris-Roubaix in 2024 and has demonstrated the raw power and resilience required on the pavé, but the physical demands of racing both the cobbled and Ardennes campaigns back-to-back have increasingly forced riders to choose one or the other. With the Amstel Gold Race on April 19, La Flèche Wallonne on April 22, and Liège on April 26, the Ardennes triple crown demands peak freshness and climbing legs that are difficult to maintain if a rider has also emptied the tank over the cobbles of northern France just a week earlier.
For Visma-Lease a Bike, the move makes strategic sense. The Dutch squad will send Wout van Aert to Paris-Roubaix as their undisputed leader on the cobbles — Van Aert's quest to finally break his Roubaix hoodoo remains one of the most compelling storylines in the sport — while Jorgenson leads the Ardennes charge. This division of labour allows the team to compete seriously on both fronts without asking any single rider to shoulder the burden of a month-long campaign spanning two radically different types of racing.
Jorgenson's 2026 season has already shown encouraging signs. His stage race results have been solid, and the 25-year-old's climbing ability has improved markedly since his breakthrough 2024 season, when he won Paris-Nice in dramatic fashion. Liège-Bastogne-Liège — La Doyenne, the oldest of the Monuments — rewards precisely the kind of rider Jorgenson is becoming: a powerful climber with the endurance to survive 260 kilometres of rolling Wallonian terrain before producing a decisive effort on the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons or the run-in to Liège itself.
The American will face fearsome competition in the Ardennes. Tadej Pogačar is expected to target the Ardennes after Paris-Roubaix as part of his extraordinary 2026 Monuments campaign, while Remco Evenepoel has made the Ardennes the centrepiece of his own spring after confirming he will skip Roubaix. Jonas Vingegaard, too, has shown form that suggests he could be a factor on the Mur de Huy and in the Ardennes hills. It is a field of extraordinary depth, and Jorgenson will need to produce the performance of his life to challenge for the podium.
Yet there is something refreshing about the clarity of Jorgenson's approach. Rather than spreading himself thin across the entire spring programme — a trap that has claimed many talented riders over the years — he has identified the race that best suits his evolving abilities and built his preparation around it. In an era when the calendar is more demanding than ever and the margins between success and exhaustion have never been finer, knowing when to say no may prove just as important as the racing itself.