Lance Armstrong and George Hincapie on Matteo Jorgenson's crash: "That did not happen today"

Matteo Jorgenson was the Amstel Gold Race's biggest casualty. The Visma | Lease a Bike leader went down hard with 42 kilometres to go, breaking his collarbone and ending his spring campaign in an instant. On THE MOVE podcast, Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, and Johan Bruyneel broke down how it happened — and what it cost the race.

The crash unfolded just as the finale was igniting. Romain Grégoire had launched the first real acceleration, and the race was coming alive. Remco Evenepoel, Mattias Skjelmose, Kévin Vauquelin and Jorgenson were all in the move — it looked like the makings of a brilliant finish. Then Vauquelin slid out in a corner, and Jorgenson had nowhere to go.

Armstrong pointed to the sheer number of bends in the closing kilometres as one factor. "If someone has nothing to do: pull up a Strava file of one of the riders and count how many corners there are — especially at the end. It's corner after corner after corner." That said, the American didn't think the situation had looked particularly chaotic before the crash. "The field seemed a bit thin," he added.

Bruyneel saw speed as the root cause. "It's also the pace. I have memories from the old days, when the whole peloton was fighting for position ahead of a crucial point. That did not happen today. It goes so fast. If you look at the average — 43 kilometres per hour — that is incredibly fast. And there are 3,400 metres of climbing in there."

The Belgian believes that intensity is what makes proper positioning impossible in modern racing. "Because by the time they get there, they're all already dead. There were only ten riders who could still go. We saw one acceleration, and that was it."

Even with Jorgenson and Vauquelin out of the equation, Bruyneel doesn't believe the result would have been different. "It would have been a different race. I think it was a real target for Jorgenson. He arrived in good form and had just come down from an altitude camp on Teide. And Vauquelin is a rider who suits the Amstel well. It would have been different — but I don't think there would have been a different winner. I don't think so."

His reasoning was straightforward: "I think Remco, given his quality, is just a cut above the rest."

Bruyneel did find some consolation in the performance of Benoît Cosnefroy, who finished third for UAE Emirates. "He did all the work. There was an EF rider [Alex Baudin] who took the odd turn at the front, but Cosnefroy really did everything — and ended up winning the sprint for third place, two minutes behind. That shows the gap between the top two and everyone else. But still: it was a good race from him."

As for Jorgenson, the collarbone fracture rules him out of La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. A spring that had promised so much ends early, and in the worst possible way.