Jonas Vingegaard out of Volta a Catalunya after Paris-Nice crash

Jonas Vingegaard will not ride the Volta a Catalunya in Spain next week due to the injuries he sustained in a crash at Paris-Nice.

The Dane was involved in a minor incident on stage five, and appeared to have injured his wrist after coming off his bike. Visma-Lease a Bike withdrew him from the race ahead of stage six as a precautionary measure.

The former two-time Tour de France winner was initially due to start the Volta a Catalunya stage race in northern Spain on 24 March, but his team said on social media on Wednesday that he would not be involved in order to give him longer to recover. Simon Yates will lead the team in his absence.

"Jonas Vingegaard has not yet recovered sufficiently from his crash in Paris-Nice. Therefore, he will not start in the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya," the team said in a short X post. "We wish him a speedy recovery."

In the aftermath of Vingegaard being pulled from Paris-Nice, Visma-Lease a Bike remained guarded regarding the state of his health and gave little away. There was initial speculation that he had suffered a fractured wrist, although head of racing Grischa Niermann put that to bed when speaking to the press on Friday.

"We did some x-rays, but it doesn’t seem like anything is broken, although it is still very painful for him and he is not feeling well after the crash," he told reporters in Berre l’Etang.

As it stands, Vingegaard's next race will be the Critérium du Dauphiné in June in which he will face Tadej Pogačar before returning to the Tour de France in July. If no further races are added to his programme in the interim, then he will have only raced twice competitively this season before the Tour.

After winning Paris-Nice on Sunday for a second time, Matteo Jorgenson was asked whether he felt he could now lead Visma-Lease a Bike in a Grand Tour setting. "Now it's time to set the bar higher. I can't say that I'm capable of winning a Grand Tour, but at least I want to try. I want to work towards that," he said.