Visma | Lease a Bike youngster Jørgen Nordhagen impresses again with a strong performance at Prato Nevoso in Giro NextGen

Nordhagen's story is now fairly well known: a talented skier, Visma, signed him | Lease a Bike in 2024 after impressive performances on the bike and in tests. It was no coincidence that he became the junior time trial champion in Norway in 2022 and finished ninth in the same age category at the World Championships in Australia. After he also started winning stages and climbing the rankings in 2023, Visma had seen enough.

Nordhagen was offered a contract until the end of 2027 and started in the development team last season. There, he finished third in Liège-Bastogne-Liège for U23 riders, won the stage to La Planche des Belles Filles in the Tour Alsace, took the mountain jersey in the Lidl Deutschland Tour on behalf of the WorldTour team, and added a few Italian U23 races to his list of achievements. Last winter, he decided to switch to the WorldTour core team and gave up skiing for good.

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His season debut was planned in Oman, but Nordhagen fell ill and made his professional debut with the big boys of Visma in Strade Bianche. He had to make up a lot of ground physically after a nasty virus and was back in action in May in the Tour de Romandie. There, he impressed by finishing eighth on a grueling mountain stage to the top of Thyon 2000. He finished ahead of Remco Evenepoel, among others.

After finishing thirteenth in the Tour of Norway, he headed for the Giro NextGen, also known as the Baby Giro. He started well with fifth place in the time trial on day 1 but saw many others gain time from breakaway attempts or late attacks. He entered the seventh stage as number nine in the GC, just under two minutes behind leader Luke Tuckwell of Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe Rookies. On Saturday, he climbed to fifth place in the GC on the way to Prato Nevoso.

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Nordhagen's climb to Prato Nevoso was impressive. Early breakaway rider Pavel Novák stayed ahead but couldn't come close to the climbing time of the man who finished second in the stage. Cycling fan Mihai Simion calculated that Nordhagen climbed the 11-kilometer climb with an average gradient of 7.4 percent in 28 minutes and 28 seconds. That was 7 seconds faster than Bernard Kohl and Carlos Sastre in the 2008 Tour de France.

Thanks to this excellent performance, Nordhagen is now fifth in the Giro NextGen, 1.23 behind Tuckwell and 56 seconds off the podium. On the last day of the Baby Giro, there are no more major climbs, but there are still two steep 2.5-kilometer walls with a gradient of 12.4 percent to climb. The finish is down in Pinerolo after another 500-meter jump at over 10 percent. This will happen without big favorite Jarno Widar (Lotto), who crashed on Saturday and abandoned the race.