The final day in Nice, often a lively stage. The yellow jersey looks wedged on Matteo Jorgenson’s broad shoulders so we’ll see who can win the stage.
The finish is later than usual.
Paris-Ice, Part 6: a strong break jumped away on the first climb to Aspremont and the surprise was that Michael Storer, 13th overall at 3m55s was allowed to get in there and he had VIP help from team mate Julian Alaphilippe.
Behind Visma-LAB seemed content to cap the lead and didn’t need to bring it back. UAE and Red Bull tried to chase too and even Nils Politt’s full rictus effort could not eat into the lead. Third overall in the morning, Mattias Skjelmose crashed and fell hard and was left prone in the road with a blanket to cover him while more specialist medical care arrived but fortunately it seems nothing was broken apart from his hopes of a podium finish.
As rain turned to sleet on the climb to Auron Cofidis’s Clément Izquierdo made the first attack, seemingly knowing he was going to get dropped so he might as well get a mention for the day, it’s what’s called une attaque boomerang in French. This prompted Aussie Michael Storer and Mauro Schmid of an Aussie team to move to the front while EF pair Georg Steinhauser and Neilson Powless were close but first the American cracked, then the German. Storer hardly needed to attack and rode away for the stage win, hoisting himself up to 4th overall. It’s a big win for Storer after his pair of Vuelta stages from 2021 and important for Tudor too as they chase wildcard invitations; all the signs point to the UCI agreeing to let ASO invite an extra team to the Tour but in case not it’s now impossible to leave out Tudor.
If Storer won the day, Mads Pedersen finishing in tenth place is also deserving of a mention, finishing ahead of Matteo Jorgenson, João Almeida and plenty of others, and he didn’t go in the break either, he just out-climbed them to Auron.
The Route: 119km and into the hills behind Nice. They leave for a neutral procession up the Var valley, a handy warm-up and then there’s hardly bit of flat road all stage. It’s all on the typical snaking roads of the region which constantly twist and turn their way up valleys and down gorges on roads where it’s hard for a team to control. The Col de Porte is “new”, as in a change to the format and a good choice for a climb, it has a wilder feel although it won’t be on TV coming early.
The 90 minutes are more familiar. With 55km to go, the race climbs out of the Paillon valley for the climb to Peille – the Col de St Pancrace to locals – and this is the hardest climb of the day. It’s listed as 6.6km at 6.8%, so worthy of a small Alpine pass on these stats alone but it’s the irregularity that makes it hard work with early sections of 9% and even 12% as it winds up a narrow road with so many bends that a rider need only get 50 metres’ lead to be out of sight. It’s where the selection seems to happen every year. It levels out further up and once over the top comes a twisting descent to La Turbie and Eze with the short rise to the Col – 6-4-2 seconds time bonus – and then it’s down the Moyenne Corniche to the coast.
The difference this year is the race doesn’t climb up all the way again to the Col d’Eze. Instead it’s “just” the wall-like Chemin du Vinaigrier with over a kilometre at 13% before picking up the main road at the Col des Quatre Chemins and then dropping down the corniche cliff road back to Nice.
The Finish: a small rise around the 1km to go point, then a flat finish on the Promenade des Anglais.
The Contenders: the way Mads Pedersen has been riding… but even if he can make it over the Peille climb the Vinaigrier sting too much. Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-LAB) is riding strong but it’s open to plenty of others.
 |
– |
 |
Jorgenson, Almeida |
 |
Foss, Sheffield, Champoussin, Van Wilder, Romeo, Castrillo, Paret-Peintre |
Weather: sunny, 12°C inland and 16°C in town.
TV: Tirreno-Adriatico is up first with a sprint finish due around 3.45pm CET.
Then Paris-Nice has 90 minutes of live with the finish forecast for 5.10pm CET.
Postcard from Peille
The Peille climb has been a fixture of Paris-Nice for over a decade now, displacing the once traditional Col d’Eze time trial on the final day. For good reason as it’s been a thriller, the cliffhanger on the corniche. Plus time trials sink TV ratings.
The quality is partly thanks to Alberto Contador. The stage in the current format, more or less, was first used in 2014 and finished in a big group sprint. But the following year Contador launched a raid and ever since the climb to Peille has been the place to move.
However the final stage’s finale is now familiar and riders know how to race it to the last metre. This knowledge means the final day isn’t as surprising as it once was, to the peloton and viewers alike. Indeed what chance a reduced bunch sprint again today? Reduced at least because the organisers have added the Vinaigrier climb.
This hypothesis of familiarity leading to formatted racing can apply to any race with the same course every time. See the Omloop and especially the Ronde van Vlaanderen, but it applies to other races held on the same roads every year, the Flèche Wallonne is the exemplar where it is always raced in the same way, nobody has won from the breakaway since 2003. There’s a self-fulfilling aspect where the peloton learns how to race a circuit, applies it again and soon there’s a consensus on the winning method being passed down from one generation to the next.
Could it be time for a new course in the hills, a shake-up? There are plenty of other good roads behind Nice, even better to show them off too.
Race to the sun … Ha!
Au contraire! A beautiful morning here in Nice. Finally…
Interesting how quickly Tudor have seemed to shift from using Alaphillipe’s star power as a lever into the Tour, to using the wily old fox as a springboard for other riders. If he’d gone to Total, they’d still be hoping for him to work the old magic in the ‘finale’.
The preposition “to” doing as much work as Nils Pollit there.
But it’s normal, March in central France is often wintry. Paris-Nice has its own history book published by ASO and there’s a dedicated section on “intemperies”, or bad weather and all the course changes and other effects this has had over the years.
1939 saw the biggest winning margin of the race, nine minutes and grim conditions explain most of this, 19 riders made it to Nice with snowstorms on many stages and the organisers having to rent buses to ferry the riders past parts of the road that even then were deemed unrideable. Spectactors helped, providing riders with hot water to soak in along the way. At one point the winner Maurice Archambaud’s hands were so frozen could not get food out of his jersey pocket and so called a policeman over for assistance.
If anything the race has almost been relatively lucky this year as a weather alert in central France means the Loge des Gardes climb might not have happened because of too much snow in recent days.
Tarling worth a mention, despite being in the break all day finished only 2 seconds behind Pederson and the group of favourites. With Ganna’s heroics at T-A, can we look forward to the ultimate 2 man TTT on Paris-Roubaix?
If Tarling is there, surely Pedersen will be and he’s just quicker. But the Vinaigrier climb should eject Tarling… we’ll see for Pedersen, normally you’d think not.
I dislike being pedantic (though sometimes I can’t help it), and I definitely know that the Inner Ring’s cycling history knowledge far surpasses my own, but I am wondering about his comment that an ITT was the traditional final stage for Paris-Nice, and that the current final stage route started in 2014. I remember standing at that top of the col d’Eze in 2006 watching the peloton whizz by and Floyd Landis in yellow. I can’t recall the whole route, but looking on PCS, it was 135 km long, which indicates to me it must have more or less followed a similar route. I was also there in 2014, when Betancaur took one of his biggest wins. And relying again on PCS, in the past two decades, it looks like there have only been two occasions when the final stage was an ITT (2012 and 2013). All other versions of this stage seem to hover around the 120 km distance (though it was 160 km long for several early 2000s editions, ending in 2003). So I guess my question is at what point was an ITT traditional? In the pre-TV age, when ratings didn’t matter?
Yes, the format of the TT wasn’t set in concrete. The final stage has seen longer TTs like Antibes-Nice… and also sprint stages too on the final day, plus variations of hilly stages climbing to Eze, like your Landis moment. The last TT now goes back to 2015 (Richie Porte won). It’s more the format with Peille-Eze-Nice has become the settled course for a decade now and it’s getting scripted.
It’s still early in the season, but I feel like there’s a new dynamic developing already. It’s UAE vs. all the rest, where attacking and aggressive riding is often rewarded and riders from teams like Uno-X and Tudor are as likely to succeed as those from Visma or Red Bull.
It’s been a tough Paris Ice. Why don’t they make a rain jacket with the opening in the back so it would be easier to put on while riding? It could close with magnets or a wet suit style zipper. I’m sure someone else has thought of this and there is a reason but it seems safer.
I have had the same thought many times but I think the issue is how to zip it up without crashing … perhaps zipping down might work.
In my experience the hardest part is getting your arms in and specifically hands through the the end of the sleeve. I don’t see how a back zipper would help in this respect and as you’ve said, makes the zipping up harder too.
Anyone with kids probably already has a set 🙂
https://www.bakerross.co.uk/wipe-clean-aprons-medium-chest-size-90cm