A look at the contenders and pretenders for Paris-Nice which starts this Sunday. Visma-Lease a Bike are the team to beat.
Route recap
Three nervous opening stages where a trapdoor can open and ruin chances but the weather forecast looks mild, so that’s possibly one stress factor less for the riders but it could be damp at times.
Tuesday is team time trial day and “Paris-Nice” rules where a team will win the stage but the times are taken on each individual rider meaning squads with ambitions for the overall need can burn through rouleurs but the winning tactic will be to retain some support for the final dash downhill into Nevers.
The Loge des Gardes is back for a second time after 2023 and a summit finish stage. The following day has some sharp climbs in the final including one to the finish with wall-like sections. A sprint stage to Berre with crosswind caveats leads the race to the Mediterranean before the weekend where there’s a ski station summit finish above Auron followed by the usual decider in Nice on the corniche roads.
There are time bonuses of 10-6-4 seconds at the finish line (except Stage 4’s TTT) and 6-4-2 seconds for the intermediate sprints. These often count in a race where the winning margin this century has never been bigger than a minute.
The Contenders
Jonas Vingegaard may need no introduction, but this year all we’ve seen is the Volta ao Algarve where he won the time trial on the last day to take the overall but he was beatable mid-race on the climbs. He said he was easing into the season and Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya are hi goals this spring so if he’s improved since he’ll be hard to beat. Backed by a strong team he can hope to use the team time trial stage to take time. If we exclude last summer’s injury-return Tour plus the Vuelta the year before where he helped team mate Sep Kuss win then his last defeat in a stage race was here in 2023 and he might have a point to prove at the Loge des Gardes finish on Stage 4 but regardless of all the extra stories we can try as garnish he’ll just want to finish the week with a win.
As a sign of their strength, Visma-Lease a Bike have last year’s winner Matteo Jorgenson as their second card to play. He was a surprise winner, profiting from the marking between Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel on Stage 6 and showed on Stage 8 he could match Evenepoel when the pair dropped the field, allowing Jorgenson to take yellow off McNulty. He won’t have so much space this year but he looked like his team’s most versatile option in the Omloop Nieuwsblad and has come from altitude training so he’s good to go while Vingegaard is yet visit Teide this year.
UAE come with multiple options. João Almeida is the form pick but how to win, where can he drop Jonas Vingegaard? It’s here team mates can try to exploit numerical superiority but Brandon McNulty took a heavy fall in last weekend’s Drôme Classic so isn’t as easy a pick. Ruta del Sol winner Pavel Sivakov has been ill since his win in Spain but has been targetting this race for some time. They’ll be worth watching as a team, can they all get past the early stages and how do they collaborate in the tactical team time trial? In some ways this is a crucial race for Almeida as he’s eminently capable of a podium but the top step is elusive; his best win so far is the Tour de Pologne and that was back in 2021 and he won’t often get leadership on UAE.
A deputy to Roglič last year, Aleksandr Vlasov is Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s leader here. Is he a grand tour contender or a one week specialist? Possibly the latter and he can climb with the best on some days. Red-Bull bring a strong squad for the time trial but they did last year too as well but imploded on the climbs outside Auxerre.
A stage winner last year, Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain) has wins this season already and just what it takes to win Paris-Nice as he can climb with the best and pick off time bonuses. Jack Haig has been in the top-10 four times but cracking the podium is a tough ask while Lenny Martinez gives the team a joker card to play for the variety of uphill finishes.
Mattias Skjelmose is a stage racing project for Lidl-Trek and he’s come a long way already but faces a test this week as he builds to the Tour de France, this has all been in his diary for over a year. A stage winner a year ago, he seems in form now after the Ardèche-Drôme weekend and the team, with different riders, have won a 34km time trial already this season which will comfort them further.
Ben O’Connor is Jayco’s new hire and returns to France. His 2024 season was superb but so far he’s off to a slower start. The team were second in the team time trial last year and hope to help O’Connor into a high position on GC before the climbing begins, where he should find each further stage suits him more.
Lots of riders and we haven’t got to Ineos yet so here comes Thymen Arensman but so far he looks like more of a grand tour rider, holding steady while others fall away. He can benefit from a strong team time trial stage.
Ivan Romeo has been a minor revelation this season, climbing with the best at times and finishing fourth in the UAE Tour. Now he faces a trickier course where positioning and technique will test him as much as the climbs but he may also like any windy days too.
Romain Bardet (Picnic-PostNL) has been sore after a crash and in the last weeks of racing is not looking to grind out a GC result, if he’s recovered he’ll look to a stage instead but he’s alas a late withdrawal. Felix Gall (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) can climb to a high GC but hard to win. Neilson Powless (EF Education-Easypost) looked great in Laigueglia this week but is he a GC rider, the question is there but he’s been in the top-10 and should feature here but to win he’d need to pull off a coup. Guillaume Martin-Guyonnet (Groupama-FDJ) has been consistent for years and the thing to look for is if he can go up a level with his new team, but perhaps not just yet as he’s been nursing a knee niggle.
Finally Max Schachmann (Soudal-Quickstep) has won Paris-Nice twice but has struggled a lot since with health issues so any kind of results along the way here would mark a return to the top but his wins are instructive, built on time bonuses and race craft (and Roglič crashing) rather than summit finish flourishes.
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Vingegaard |
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Jorgenson |
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Almeida |
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Skjelmose, McNulty |
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Vlasov, Buitrago, Sivakov |
TV: there will be daily stage previews with timings but you’ll find the race on FranceTV for locals and VPN users, Eurosport or whatever it is called where you live and generally on the same channel you watch the Tour de France.
Thanks for the preview. I always enjoy Paris-Nice, so am looking forward to this. At the same time, Tirreno-Adriatico has an intriguing GC field with no standout favourite (albeit a lacklustre route) so could be a good watch too.
Max Schachmann looks like he’s getting closer to his former self after a couple of tough seasons – would be great to see him perform here again.
Has Guillame Martin changed his name?
No, his mother’s last name is Guyonnet and has decided to be called Guillaume Martin Guyonnet to honor his mother.
Plapp and Hatherly aren’t in Jayco’s confirmed team – Hatherly is doing Strade Bianche so instead we’ll find out if he can do it on a dusty afternoon in Tuscany.
Will amend the above, thanks. Still waiting for the official startlist.
One of my favourite races. Crosswinds can liven up the early races, the TTT format is really fun (I wonder why no other race copied it yet) and the final stage to Nice often creates surprises.
2026’s Tour de France has a opening TTT with “Paris-Nice” rules.
Thanks again to Mr Ring for the always informative blog.
robmd – Yes, just around the corner from my home. Stellar desicion from ASO for once!
Picks 1 and 2 in the same team can’t be a good thing.
Great walkthru as always! It looks to be an interesting race this year.
Fingers crossed for Pidcock on the road to Siena. Would be unbearable if monumental bore Pog copies last year… 🙁
I’m impressed by the two brits. But I’m afraid pogi will win again.
Last year #10 was more than 5 mins after pogi. I think he will beat that today.
Pog’s crash likely cut his winning margin by 2 min. But he’ll likely have at least a 4 min margin to no 10. So yes..
Pretty close – Pidcock being the outlier, the gap from pogi to # 3-10 is very close to the results last year. Including the crash.
That’s sort of “impressive” work by Gianetti.
Can we get a little credit to the third “brit”, Ben Healy? 😉
Did anyone happen to catch a live transmission? I’m working in Sweden this month and can usually find the spring races in Scandiavia, but all seem to have dropped it this year.
Ryan,
I streamed the RAI feed via VPN – I understand enough(ish) Italian to follow. Stuck in Frankfurt Airport, so I’ll not blame RAI for the sub-optimal connection.
I like Healy – he’s on my top-10 list of non-Spanish riders with Van Aert, Gee, Cort, Alaphilippe, Pedersen, Küng, .. From Birmingham right?
Damn……. 🙁
Has “piling on the power like Pogacar” become an expression yet?
I thought the crash would take the wind out of his sails a bit but he still had plenty.
Cadence – so did I. And given that the crash and that he subsequently clearly rode with more care in all must have cost him 2-3 minutes, the margins are hideous.
I wonder if the carnage at Strade Bianche and the relative lack of competitive balance will make more teams keep their best teams away next year. It was very costly for a number of teams and most had no chance of a podium. Race organizers should definitely do a post-mortem and consider how to improve the race.
Like Paris-Roubaix it is a race but also a shop window for the bike industry and most teams want to be their for all their bike and kit suppliers to show their gravel models or just how strong their team-issue bikes are when used in difficult conditions.
That’s really interesting and an angle I wasn’t considering. I suppose every kind of race has those teams who aren’t well set up for them, but they still want to have a presence.
The route and the race itself is wonderful, but difficult to do anything with regards to Boregacar.
Reportedly, it was a record edition in terms of roadside spectators with amazing figures.
OTOH audience data in Italy are steady in the short term but with a slight downward trend when compared to, say, 5 years ago (~700K > ~600K).
General media impact was very satisfactory, too.
As for race participation, race dynamics and so on, it makes no sense at all to change a race due to very short term situations. The main asset for a race, what you build on, is consistency in race format and calendar. Changing must be considered always as a desperate move, last resort of sort. It can work, of course, but it often doesn’t (better tackling more subtle questions before). Obviously you can find examples of both. And, yes, when a negative trend lasts for more than 5-6 editions, then you can think about some more radical measures (normally some little but decisive tilt about the course).
To make things clearer, I have some serious doubts about the way they’ve made the course much harder for this edition, pushing further on the 2024 trend. Really no need for that. If anything, I’d say more kms but less altitude gain, and back to 2022-23 or so is perfectly fine.
No need to go into fantasy frenzy as on CN’s “analysis” to tilt and twist even more, just stick to the most effective recipe.
The race is stellar and I cannot see how the organizers should be able to fix the “problem” – being pog’ed to death. Changing the route would likely have little effect.
Yep, I agree, I was just answering to Craig above.
As a mere side note, to hinder Pogacar they could opt for an easier course in order to have a less selective race. Would that make any sense?
I’d leave the Pogi question aside, too (by the way, as much as many fans complain about the formulaic races, which I sometimes agree with, it must be said that, as usual, generalist mass spectators are drawn in by the superstar effect, no matter how eventless the actual race).
Anyway, even if you don’t consider Pogi, I’d still consider going back to the ~3K vertical gain course when compared to the current +20-25% one, as I feel (but it might be pure chance) that the mix between climbing types and heavier men was actually slightly more balanced before the switch.
Finally, may I suggest having a look at the women race which is usually great, and this edition was, too. Perhaps when Pogi goes they should just broadcast again the women race as a second chance for those who hadn’t watched it…
I’d agree, the only way to “De-Pog” a race is to add more KMs and reduce the gradients. No one can match Pog on power climbs, but at least a few could stay on his wheel on flatter ground, and of those a handful can beat him on the kick on shorter sprint climbs.
The star classics riders can beat him, on less hilly courses.
I’ll agree with most. However I do think that the “generalist mass spectators” are fewer and futher between for a – say – streamed 6 hour bike race, than for (back then) 1 minute of e.g. Usain Bolt magic. For the roadside attendance Its probably more accurate. But we’ll see.
Gabriele, just wanted to say that I agree 100% with the idea of going back to a somewhat easier route. I should have been more clear about what I meant. I feel like the course actually decreased the number of possible winners, which I generally don’t love. Even though Pogi was always going to be the most likely winner anyway, the organizers didn’t need to make it that much more likely.