The 2025 Paris-Nice route has been released. No surprises for the start outside Paris and the finish in Nice. In between there are some familiar stops and some novelty.
It’ll run between Sunday 9 March and Sunday 16 March. Here’s a closer look at the eight stages…
Stage 1 is the habitual circuit race in the Yvelines départment to the west of Paris. It’s a likely sprint finish but remember 2024’s race where Matteo Jorgenson won the hilltop time bonus ahead of Remco Evenepoel before the finish? The duo would finish in the same order overall in Nice.
Le Perray-en-Yvelines is a small town whose mayor coincidentally happens to be vice-president of the Yvelines council, curiously he’s just turned 30 so there’s the chance he shakes hands with a stage winner older than him.
Stage 2 is the sprint stage with the copy-paste line from past editions that if Mother Nature intervenes then this can become a semi-classic where the bunch is shredded by crosswinds and some riders bid adieu to any GC ambitions. This is just what happened in 2019, the last time went to Bellegarde.
When a local newspaper reported Paris-Nice would use the Magny-Cours motorsport circuit hearts might have sunk. These tracks never make for good bike races, a thrilling chicane in a Formula 1 race is barely a bend at 45km/h during a bike race. So the good news is Stage 3 starts on the track but quickly heads for real roads in the countryside on the way to Nevers. There are two climbs. These are crucial because this is a 28km team time trial and the familiar “Paris-Nice rules” will apply whereby time is not taken on the fifth rider, but on the individual time taken to complete the course. GC riders are not held back on the final climb and rouleurs can be used up on the approach to Nevers while the winning tactic will be to retain some support for the final dash downhill.
Stage 4 is the first summit finish and features a return to the Loge des Gardes climb that featured in 2023. That day saw Tadej Pogačar smile to the camera as he sat on Jonas Vingegaard’s wheel before dispatching the Dane and David Gaudu built his second place overall by coming in behind Pogačar.
The day has 3,100m of vertical gain from a mix of set-piece climbs and lumpy roads. The finish harder than the 7.1% average suggests because it’s got a flat penultimate kilometre, most of the time it’s a tricky 8-9% and so this is a selective summit finish.
Is Stage 5 a breakaway day? The course suits but long range moves keep being mowed down these days. The final third of the course – paired with TV coverage – features several small backroads, if this was Tirreno-Adriatico we’d call it the “wall stage” and positioning as well as punchy riding will count for plenty.
The novel surprise is at the finish. Your blogger did a recon of a Dauphiné stage years ago and serendipitously left the race route at La Côte-Saint-André, probably to see the views, and rode up this climb. It’s very steep and narrow, the chapel at the top evokes Mont Brouilly but this is more intense, think the Flèche Wallonne’s finish instead.
Stage 6 goes to the coast and racing around the Rhone river delta, home of the Mistral wind so a sprint finish stage with the compulsory crosswind caveat. The finish is beside the saltwater lagoon with its beaches, maritime pine forest… and the nearby massive petrochemical works of Berre and Fos.
Stage 7 goes to Auron… hopefully because this stage uses a lot of roads from 2024’s planned 173km stage which had to be rerouted to the Madonne d’Utelle at the last minute because of snow, a hiccup but good publicity for a ski resort. 2025’s route is shorter but still has the Colmiane before the summit finish to Auron and beyond, the road climbs beyond the village to 1,600m for a finish at the foot of the ski pistes. It’s a smooth summit finish on a wide road and short at “only” seven kilometres.
Stage 8 is the traditional Nice-Nice cliffhanger. The course is new as a whole but the synthesis of past finales, it borrows the Col de la Porte from 2020, before linking up to the familiar format of recent years with Peille and then the Col des Quatre Chemins tackled via the steep Vinaigrier road.
The Verdict
Familiar features throughout to the point where any daily stage previews next March can lift chunks of text from previous posts, at least when it comes to describing the route each day. It’s not as if it’s annual repetition: Stage 4’s summit finish is only deployed for the second time, the next day’s stage with several wall-like climbs and the narrow uphill finish is novel, so is the big Auron finish.
The two summit finishes are only seven kilometres which is short compared to the usual Colmiane or Couiolle hour-long slog so things could be closer going into the final stage.
Up for grabs
Heard the joke about social science exams where the questions are the same every year, instead it’s the correct answer that changes? Now the course is known, the intrigue is who will win. Especially because this a World Tour stage race sans Tadej Pogačar. Ditto Primož Roglič because the Slovenians, both past winners, have announced their plans already. Runner-up last time Remco Evenepoel is likely to miss this because of injury and rehab but don’t rule him out yet.
However Jonas Vingegaard is starting according to organisers ASO, something repeated in the Danish paper Extrabladet minutes ago too. 2024 winner Matteo Jorgenson should be back too.
This will have other teams and rival GC contenders sighing as their shot at a World Tour stage race win just got much harder. Vingegaard has yet to win this race, the team will be a force in the team time trial and looking to get their mojo back. But he’d choose longer climbs if he could.
Update: Among the rivals likely to start, L’Equipe mentions Aleksandr Vlasov, Brandon McNulty and Ben O’Connor.
For now there are 80 days to go and the wildcard invites haven’t been announced either. There are still two weeks left for rider transfers too.
An enticing last line there. Riders make a race as much as a parcours, so interesting to see who gets to come along to this or Tirreno. Q365 and Tudor are making increasingly compelling cases for wildcard entries to the biggest races, but will have to muscle past domestic incumbents and not-so-much-of-an-upstart-any-more Uno-X. Do organisers give entries to so called lesser races to test out the commitment of prospective teams?
Your description of the Tirreno-esque “wall” stage has caught my attention. Looking forward to it already.
Q36.5 don’t have the squad to do much in the way of WT stage races. P-N could be a good one subject to getting invites to some decent early season preparation races (into P-N at the deep end doesn’t sound a good idea)
Q36.5 haven’t finished recruiting yet either. Things look tight for wildcards, two Paris-Nice and Tour de France places to give among Tudor, Total, Uno-X and now Q36.5, to the point where who would complain if 24 teams could ride instead of 22? (answer: some, but you get the point).
Paris-Nice has been used as a sort of audition before but it’s never been easy, a small team expected to prove themselves in tough week on the calendar as DJW says.
The only WT stage races Q36.5 look certs for are Romandie and Tour de Suisse, beyond that the Arctic Race, Norway, Britain… It looks like thin gruel for Pidcock to justify his career choice .
Unless, of course, he’s happy to keep doing what he wants when he wants to, and probably be paid very well in the process. If that means mountain biking and Cyclocross, then more power to him. If it means winning stages here and there, but not the GC, then cool. I was never really convinced that he could be a GC rider, and Q36.5 will get invites to a lot of one day races (which is where Pidcock’s strengths lie in any case). Q36.5 is viewed as a “step down” by most people, but if he’s happier there, how can anyone really criticize that?
As long as Pidcock gets to go to the one-day races, I think he’ll be happy. He must have realised that the TdF might not happen, but I doubt he’ll be too concerned about not taking a stage at P-N.
Thanks both – you picked up on my intention, even if I articulated it poorly! Yes. How can Q365/Tudor get on WT start lists (including P-N) when others are already well established?
Although I must say I think both the newer Swiss teams stand a better chance of impacting on top races than Arkea (for example) this year. Interesting times.
I’m so glad every time I see a TTT announced. This one looks especially exciting, hopefully not too technical and the really fast teams can show their stuff. Cycling is a “team sport,” yet I often hear complaints about the biggest test of team strength. I can’t wait to see who flies and who flails.
They’ve fallen out of favour at the Tour, I think in part because they’ve tended to reward the big teams where the eighth rider team like Sky, BMC and now Visma or UAE is probably better in a time trial than the best rider among many other teams, and collectively the big teams can pull ahead, a “rich get richer” scenario where the expected GC winners get wider gaps when the organisers try to engineer more suspense.
But I was half-expecting a return of the TTT at the Tour next summer with the Mûr-de-Bretagne finish used with “Paris-Nice rules” but that was wrong.
I love that you mentioned BMC, who sadly melted away. Watching their TTT was incredibly impressive.
And ONCE upon a time…
I like a TTT as well. They tend to create tension both because they are tricky and because there is generally a rider hanging on like grim death to make it to the finish.
I find it fun with these rules because they give an added tactical dimension, teams using up rouleurs, but also teams blowing up precisely because they don’t have to stick together, a bit like Bora-hansgrohe in the last Paris-Nice. It gives us something to talk about on a Tuesday.
A beautiful course, and a pity if it ended up as a Vuelta 2023 remake of sort with Visma having to decide who’s going to win among the only plausible contenders.
Does the reference to McNulty imply that we won’t have A. Yates or Almeida, either?
Unclear for Almeida but UAE have such congestion that they surely have to come with two leaders and so he seems probable, you can imagine Ayuso and Yates at Tirreno, all while Vine, Christen, Del Toro and more want chances too.
Hard to imagine you leave a guy like McNulty out given the TTT!