A lively week. Matteo Jorgenson was active from start to finish, winning bonus seconds on the opening Sunday, winning the team time trial mid-week and then dropping everyone on the Col d’Eze a week later. This was an accumulation of winning moments but riding away while in yellow was a definitive display.
Start as you mean to go on and Stage 1 saw Jorgenson on the attack in the final kilometres, and taking second place at the intermediate sprint with 10km to go meant a time bonus of four seconds. In a race often decided by seconds this was helpful but the more immediate gain was distance on Jonas Vingegaard. In the event they finished together in the upcoming team time trial Jorgenson would be ahead and so the notional leader. This intrigue wasn’t just gossip to fill a quiet day, it mattered because the two were the obvious picks for the week.
Tim Merlier took the first two stages and made it look easy. “Never two without three” goes a saying in French but he missed out in the crosswinds on Stage 6 where Mads Pedersen won and the Dane took the points jersey to Nice, by which time Merlier didn’t finish the final stage. One regret for the sprint stages was the continued absence of Fabio Jakobsen who still can’t get back into the first echelon of sprinters.
The Nevers team time trial was fun thanks to the “Paris-Nice rules” component which adds an extra tactical dimension to the day, and also makes these decisions visible. People watching on TV can see easily what is happening as riders are dropped, as opposed to trying to spot if someone is sitting on or if the team is easing the pace. Visma-Lease a Bike won the stage with the surprise of Ineos and UAE losing 32 and 42 seconds.
A team time trial with these rules works well for a quiet Tuesday in March; we’ll see what it means for a noisy Saturday in July when it is deployed for the Tour de France’s opening stage in Barcelona. At 19km it matters but how much will it be a “GC stage” remains to be seen, time gaps should be closer than this week. The format needs the right kind of course, big roads for rouleurs then a hill to put them in the red, before a summit finish of kinds in order to tease out the leaders.
Almeida was now 48 seconds down on GC and his GC ambitions torpedoed. He was the lucky one on the team because Pavel Sivakov had been ill before the race and started short of the form he hoped for. He’d been dreaming of the race for months, only now he was dropped by team mates on the run into Nevers. Both riders know they won’t get many chances to lead the team this year, that they’ll soon be paid to pull for Pogačar.
Almeida of course won the next day and convincingly. It was more than consolation, and his first win in France as he mowed down Vingegaard on the final rise to the line. This came at the Loge des Gardes summit finish and after an accidental split stage. The day’s racing was neutralised for 45 minutes after a hailstorm pelted the course with ice and vehicles started sliding off the road. What was a pause to allow riders to safely don wet weather gear and avoid accident turned into a 45 minute break, part-rolling, part-stopped. We’ll remember Almeida’s win but the day’s racing was impacted by the long pause which had many riders frozen to the bone and shivering as they waited for the race to resume.
Vingegaard took the yellow jersey but did not look convincing, not his usual airy style: still the high cadence but you could see the strain, from his ankles to his shoulders. The spell in yellow didn’t last long as he crashed the next day and injured his wrist, finishing the stage but losing time and would not start the next day.
Bad weather is a feature of Paris-Nice. The official history manual includes a section dedicated to the bad weather, even that just has highlights/lowlights from over the years for illustration, rather than a meteorological catalogue.
Vingegaard was alas one of many to crash out of the race. The trend started when organiser François Lemarchand crashed on a ride before the race so Yannick Talabardon was promoted to sole directeur de course. Luke Durbridge was out on Stage 2 and this hit Jayco’s shot at a stage win the following day. Santiago Buitrago was on his way back to the peloton after a puncture only to crash and was out of the race. Mattias Skjelmose was third overall at the start of stage 7 but crashed out. Brandon McNulty was also in the top-10 but was exhausted by the final day and left. We’ll see who got through the week but falls ill this week.
It was Lenny Martinez who won the “wall” stage culminating in the sharp climb above La Côte-Saint-André. Is he a punchy finisseur or an Alpine climber? He’s showing he can do the former but his plan at Bahrain is to master the latter but it’s a different game, forty minutes rather than four. Another winner that day was the course design, the organisers not tracing the simplest route but instead hunting for attitude, if not altitude.
Martinez went from hero to almost zero in a day, at least going by the roasting he got from his team management as he missed the split in the crosswinds provoked by Visma-LAB. Another day, another success for Jorgenson who saw Martinez and Almeida distanced on the overall classification.
The stage to Auron is the what-could-have-been day as for all his success during the week, Jorgenson was never tested on a long climb and the Col Saint-Martin was a longer effort. Steady and not steep he probably would have looked imperial if the weather had been kinder; instead he was more discreet on the icy climb of the day where Michael Storer won from the breakaway and got himself back into the GC mix.
Tudor, Uno-X and TotalEnergies continue their dance for a Tour de France wildcard invitation. The Swiss team looks in pole position thanks to star riders and now delivering the summit finish win for Michael Storer where Julian Alaphilippe played his part. Uno-X still provided animation during the week while Thomas Gachignard won the mountains competition – after building a lead mid-week but not scoring a point on the final weekend – by one point ahead of Storer and Almeida. Organisers might like to delay in order to make teams jostle like this but the real problem is for the Giro, now less than eight weeks away.
The final day saw Mads Pedersen on the rampage but it was just too mountainous for him, he seems ready for the Cipressa, let alone the Poggio; on French TV moto commentator Thomas Voeckler cautioned viewers about buying a bike from the team’s end of season sale as the cranks could be bent on Pedersen’s bike.
Magnus Sheffield jumped away after the climb to Peille and caught Pedersen, Felix Gall and Aleksandr Vlasov and rode away for the stage win. Behind Jorgenson attacked, dropping his rivals. He didn’t need to do this but could and almost caught Sheffield. Sheffield’s win marked a solid week for Ineos and a reward for aggressive racing.
The Verdict
An enjoyable edition of the race, especially when viewed from somewhere warm. If Mother Nature wants to send bad weather then some crosswinds on the opening two days would have been welcome, less so the hailstorm in the Auvergne mid-week, nor the snow on the final Saturday. Florian Lipowitz and Thymen Arensman climb on the box but did not shape the race in the same way and they owe their position in part to the mishaps of others but as Mattias Skjelmose lamented, “everything can change in a split second”.
Whatever tests Jorgenson was given he passed each time and unlike last year where he took yellow on the final day, he was in the limelight all week and often in yellow. Speaking French to TV helps his popularity although in France he remains “Yorgenson” rather than “Djorgenson”. He finished with the biggest winning margin this century.
Florian Lipowitz had a very solid week. A revelation in Romandie last year, now confirmation as he could hang with the best. For RedBull there’s the sense that “Lipo” has some way to go when it comes to racecraft, the best is yet to come for the 24 year old.
The week was an involuntary loss for Jonas Vingegaard. The Volta Catalunya starts this time next week, his next appointment. He talked about Paris-Nice and Catalunya as his goals for the spring. There’s the sense of needing a win, to banish misfortune and next week’s race will be fascinating as Juan Ayuso and Primož Roglič are there too.
All roads now lead to Sanremo, a recovery spin along the coast from Nice. For Jorgenson there’s the possibility of Italy, only in a different direction and a different dimension. Pro cycling quickly banks achievements and asks what is next and for Jorgenson the Giro is the ultimate answer: in 2026 as leader. He turned down the role for this year. It makes sense with the high mountains still unknown. Before then he’s already said he’ll be back for Paris-Nice in 2026.
Will others be able to pick too? This may be the last time Paris-Nice runs concurrent with Tirreno-Adriatico? Calendar reform is coming, it always is, but it could happen this time. This might be a fix to a problem that barely exists and the solution will have half the peloton without the pre-classics stage race they need; Van der Poel said yesterday he opted for Tirreno precisely because he found skipping it last year meant he was missing something in Sanremo. This Saturday we’ll see if he’s got the extra he needs to duel with Pogačar on the Poggio… or the Cipressa.