The traditional opener to the west of Paris.
The Route: 156km and on familiar roads towards the Chevreuse valley, the habitual start of the race and also crossing the Olympic road race route from last summer.
The climb of Villiers-Saint-Frédéric is spiky, going up into town the first thing is how the road narrows but the promised 15% doesn’t seem to appear but it’s only when leaving the town that the course flicks off into an even smaller road and there’s an 18% warning sign. The steep part is short, a few pedal strokes. It’s chased by a climb out of Les Mesnuls which is much rider but begins with rattling section of pavé.
The Côte des 17 Tournants, “climb of the 17 bends”, sounds impressive but it’s featured several times before and we’ve seen it’s not Alpe d’Huez’s Parisian cousin. Any bends are mere kinks in the road rather than hairpins but it’s 1km at 6% and the virtual finish line for any early breakaway whose riders hope to take the mountains jersey.
What does change direction a lot is the course but it’s not so windy today. It’s back over Villiers-Saint-Frédéric and Les Mesnuls again for the sharp climb and the cobbles and intermediate sprint with the 3-2-1 seconds time bonus.
The Finish: a flat finish in town. There’s a sharp left with 700m to go but this won’t be a surprise as the race will take this twice before during the stage.
The Contenders
Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) is the fastest sprinter in the race and comes with some lead-out support. As well as rivals, his challenge is getting over the climbs today but they’re short and he won here on a similar course in 2023 (pictured).
If it was hillier Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) would like it more but this could be his best short, especially if his team and others can try to exploit the course. Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) is still winning but his last World Tour win came in the 2020 Tour de France.
A sprint finish is the likely scenario because of the course but also because many teams have a sprinter. UAE bring J-S Molano, Red Bull have Danny Van Poppel and so on across many teams so we can expect a hectic finish.
Who is Picnic-PostNL’s sprinter? Deploying two in the same team doesn’t work, especially in a stage race as today there only 60 UCI points for the winner down to 2 for 10th place but we’ll see how Fabio Jakobsen is and Tobias Lund is a contender too.
Like Kristoff, Arnaud Démare (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) is chasing 100 career wins but one quirk for his wins is how few of them have happened in the early season, even if he’s won the Paris-Nice opener before. Third in the Samyn behind Van der Poel and Magnier, Emilien Jeannière (TotalEnergies) is a long shot.
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Merlier |
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Pedersen |
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Jakobsen, Lund, Dainese, Van Poppel, Kristoff |
Weather: cloudy and 17°C, a 15km/h breeze from the South-East isn’t enough to split the bunch but means a light tailwind for the dash to the finish.
TV: the finish is forecast for 3.25pm CET / Euro time.
Coverage starts on FranceTV at 1.35pm, so about two hours of live. It’s also on Eurosport or whatever it is called where you live, generally on the same channel you watch the Tour de France, eg Peacock in the US, SBS in Australia, J-Sports in Japan but looks like only delayed highlights on ITV in Britain.
Postcard from Le Perray
Why Le Perray? It’s to around 6,000 people and on the road and railway line south-west of Paris that goes all the way to Spain, once-upon-a-time a sort of French Route 66. It’s just down the road from Rambouillet, more famous for its hunting palace and a cycling connection with the start of the Paris-Brest-Paris randonnée.
Paris-Nice has a deal with the Yvelines department west of Paris to host the opening stage every year; and the start of the final stage of the Tour de France too. The race is gradually working its way through the list of towns and to answer the question, well Le Perray’s mayor is Geoffroy Bax de Keating who just happens to be vice-president of the Yvelines department which probably explains plenty.
It’s another entry into the hypothesis of “mayors make the wheels go round” where local government is pro cycling’s half-hidden big client. We might tune in to see the riders and teams in action but none of this happens without humdrum local government: it repairs the roads, hosts the start, closes the course, instructs police and more, including printing posters for local shops to publicise the race, sweeping the roads, planting yellow-themed flower displays and more that barely register on TV but visit in person and you can sense the activity. None of this is sexy, it’s not a revelation to point it out either but it is just fundamental.
It feels a little like a provincial race after yesterday’s Tuscan drama. Here’s hoping the riders provide something more than the routine no-hopers breakaway and bunch sprint. Fingers crossed!
Harder to predict the winner today, some uncertainty at least.
How can you have a name like “Geoffroy Bax de Keating” ? It looks like a race horse’s name… Mix of english and dutch ascendance ? South African huguenot ? Geoffroy is a name that sound very posh for France… Thanks for the little stories, as always !
After a few researches, and for the rare people who would be interested, Keating is an Irish name ; the family came to France in the XVIIth century, became noble (hence the “de”). Then a daughter of the Keatings married a Bax (which, contrary to what I thought thinking about Sjoerd, would not be a Dutch name but a British one) who added his name to the “de Keating”. So it’s two old british names with a french “de” in the middle. In French it sounds very strange.
Or is it from Mauritius and Réunion? Either way a memorable name and the mayor is under 30 today so he might be shaking hands on the podium with a winner who is older than him. It’s only a small town but if he’s vice president of the department already there’s the chance he goes on to more in politics.
His aristocratic name would be a handicap though, knowing the French people…
Well there was Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d’Estaing, though he was President quite a while ago…well in my lifetime.
30km to go and i have no idea who is going to win stage 1. Anyone could win at this point.