Weekly Recap

Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico took place this week. Paris-Nice was the more interesting of the two with a showdown between Remco and Roglic and a host of other top up-and-comers in the race. It also had a better parcours than Tirreno, which was a one-horse race with Jonas in the ranks. Unfortunately, I never got around to previewing Tirreno, but there wasn’t much of note happening anyway.

But let’s discuss each stage, starting with Paris-Nice, as that one kicked off first.

The race to the sun began on Sunday, March 3 with a bit of a tricky opening stage. Remco and Roglic went for the bonus seconds on top of the final hill, but lost out to Matteo Jorgenson. Eventually the peloton re-absorbed the GC favorites and it came down a bunch sprint won by Olav Kooij over Mads Pedersen, who sprinted too early.

Stage Two was another group finish taken shockingly by Arvid de Kleijn over Laurence Pithie. That’s a big win for Tudor, a non-WorldTeam, as well as a big result for Pithie, who seems like the real deal.

Stage Three was a Team Time Trial in varying weather conditions, which unfortunately affected the outcome, but not the outcome of the final General Classification. UAE took the W over Jayco, with EF surprisingly in third place. The ramifications of this TTT were that the UAE duo of McNulty and Almeida would enter the climbing stages with an edge over their rivals, while the other GC contenders lost varying amounts of time, but not a significant amount. McNulty went into the leaders’ jersey and would have to defend it on some quite tricky and bad weather stages coming up.

Stage Four was arguably the Queen Stage with the real one being truncated due to snow. With 3-and-a-half thousand meters of elevation and a nice 3k 7% finishing climb, the hitters (now with a disadvantage in the GC) were expected to hit. Bora paced hard all day with the obvious plan to set up a Rogla attack. It never materialized. Luke Plapp went on the penultimate climb with Santiago Buitrago in tow. The chase was a bit disorganized but those two were incredibly strong. The duo built an insurmountable lead and then did the final climb at the same speed as the GC group, with Santi riding away to win the stage and move way up on GC, and Plapp holding on for second to take the yellow jersey. The favorites never really went and Mattias Skjelmose won the sprint for third over Remco. Egan Bernal rode to a surprising fifth place. I’ve been bearish on his comeback, but I did wonder if he was proving me wrong (he wasn’t). I really think the top guys slow-paced this final climb and Roglic just did not have the legs in this race. But let’s continue the recap before we analyze the result.

Stage Five was another sprint won by Kooij again with Pedersen also sprinting too early yet again and finishing second.

Stage Six was the longest of the race at 198km with some steep ramps about 30km from the false-flat descent finish. I thought Remco or Roglic would finally do the business on this one and show the pretenders who is boss. But what transpired was an American-Danish alliance upending the GC. McNulty and Jorgenson went with Skjelmose in tow and pulled like TRUCKS (LRCP shoutout) on the false flat descent to open the gap on the rest of the favorites. I checked Strava to see just how impressive their ride was, and they averaged 37 miles per hour down a 2 percent grade for a significant distance. Skjelmose was hurting in the wheels, but he has a sprint on him and mugged the Americans to take a nice stage and move up in the GC. The race dynamics continued to shuffle. McNulty retook the lead and Jorgenson moved into second, 23 seconds back. There were still 7 guys within 90 seconds of the lead, and Roglic sat in 11th just under 2 minutes back. Sadly, Santi crashed and lost his GC position.

Stage Seven was unfortunately shortened and made far easier due to the aforementioned weather, which gave the Americans on paper a much better shot of holding onto their GC dominance. This stage was now just 104km with a 15k/5.7percent finishing climb. That’s normally not quite enough to create much difference in terms of gaps between the GC leaders. But with the hard pace all day and bad weather (which had been a feature of the race for multiple days now) things were likely to happen. In the end, Aleksandr Vlasov soloed away and hung on by eight seconds to win the stage and shore up his GC position. Remco won the sprint for second with Roglic third. Skjelly and Jorgenson finished on the same time while McNulty showed weakness and lost a dozen or so seconds, but salvaged the jersey going into the last day.

With the traditional chaotic medium mountain day around Nice to conclude this great race, everything was to play for with the top five all within 47 seconds. With a hard pace early, the breakaway never really gained much of a gap. About 50km out, Remco launched a series of attacks which eventually, only Jorgenson could follow before Vlasov bridged up to them. Vlasov probably went way over his limit to surge and catch them, but eventually he would hang on for third after Remco hammered the rest of the day and Jorgenson was never an inch off of his wheel. Jorgenson clinched the GC with McNulty fighting valiantly to finish on the final podium. Matteo sort of gifted the sprint to Remco who took stage honors and second place on the GC. Roglic finished the week five minutes back in 10th place.

Things I learned from Paris-Nice:

What sticks out to me the most is that neither two of the Big Four won a very prestigious One Week WorldTour stage race which would have to have been a big target for both. At hardly any point in the race did either rider look like the strongest in the race, either. So either the pack has caught up to them, or they are just not bringing top form at this point in the season. With the insane demonstrations of Jonas (we’ll discuss that below) and Pogacar already this year, things aren’t looking good for R&R for Twenty-One Days in July…

Jorgenson is amazing. I predicted a podium finish for him, but I never expected him to win this race in such convincing fashion. Now, he did not take a single stage, but he was very consistent and brilliant tactically. I don’t see him as a GC leader in a Grand Tour yet, but he is building in that direction. Obviously, he looks like the American with the greatest claim to being the USA’s next Tour winner. While that is still an enormously long shot, so was his conquering Paris-Nice against two of the Big Four.

Skjelmose has also improved his GC riding; I’m excited to see him in the Vuelta this year.

Santiago Buitrago is a real podium threat in a soft Giro. He has already won two stages and podiumed Liege, and he’s better than ever this year. Unfortunately, he crashed out of Paris-Nice on the final stage and we don’t know his condition yet.

Roglic might be on the way down. Getting 10th and finishing 5:33 back is not good, especially without the even bigger hitters in the race.

Remco had an okay week for his standards, I don’t think he’s ready to compete for the TDF podium yet, let alone the top step, but it might have been the weather, and I could apply that to Rogla too. Either way, he’s going to have to get still better this year and in the future to win Le Grand Boucle. The competition is just too fierce.

Bernal is not ready to mount a real Grand Tour GC bid yet, and probably never will be again.

Wilco Kelderman finished 8th in GC, wow, I never noticed him in the race. He also broke his collarbone crashing in the last corner. That’s a shame. He should bounce back pretty quickly though.

Things I didn’t learn from Paris-Nice:

Joao Almeida is overrated (I knew this already) (He finished in 11th over 6 minutes back)

If Plapp is going to fulfill his potential (he finished 6th which is amazing in this company, but he may have benefited a lot from his tactical heist on stage four).

If Felix Gall is going to step up as a GC rider. He finished in 9th, 4:35 down. His time trial needs work, but based on this race, so does his climbing.

Over in Italy, Tirreno-Adriatico is nicknamed “The Race Between the Two Seas” because it crosses Italy from West to East. The field was strong as always but with an alien Jonas Vingegaard in flying form, there wasn’t much GC action to be expected, besides the fight for the podium behind him.

Stage One was the traditional 10k pan-flat ITT. With some rain and wind for some competitors but less for others, there were some strange results. Juan Ayuso took the victory by one second over the favored Filippo Ganna. Sprinter Jonathan Milan took a crazy third place. Jonas finished in 9th place, 22 seconds down, which set up some attacking riding from the Dane later in the race.

Stage Two was a sprint won by Japser Philipsen over Tim Merlier.

Stage Three was an uphill sprint taken surprisingly by Phil Bauhaus over Milan, with young French climber Kevin Vauquelin a shocking third place.

Stage Four was yet another sprint, this time won by Milan over Philipsen.

Finally, on Stage Five, there was some action. The route design was interesting with San Giacomo, a 12km 6 percent climb cresting 24 kilometers from the finish line. In a Grand Tour, this kind of stage would be for the breakaway. But Jonas was feeling greedy and needed to make up his deficit anyway. He went absolutely mutant, going 27km/hr up the 6.2 percent average gradient for 26 minutes to obliterate the climbing record and go solo. He crushed the descent and false-flat finish to win the stage by 72 seconds. Ayuso got the better of Jai Hindley in the sprint for second.

Stage Six was a MTF with Monte Petrano, which is about 10k at 8 percent. I thought Jonas would win by even more. He probably took it a bit easier and only put 26 seconds into everybody else to solidify his GC title. In a repeat of the prior day, Ayuso took second on the same time as Jai in third.

Stage Seven was a fast day with hills in the beginning, but the sprint teams controlled it tightly and it set the record for fastest-ever stage in the long history of this race. Milan got the better of the field again, with Alexander Kristoff finishing in a nice second place.

The final GC was 1). Jonas 2). Ayuso 3). Hindley

Things I learned from Tirreno-Adriatico:

Jonas is even scarier than I thought. Ayuso commented after one of Jonas’ demonstrations “I’m first place among the human beings in this race”. Even Jonas shouldn’t be able to make a 72-second gap with a shallow 26-minute climb and a long solo ride to the finish. But he did (by pushing 6.7 w/kg), and over Ayuso and Hindley, who aren’t nobodys. I don’t think Jonas is going to be defeated in any of his races this year, especially in July. R&R showed weakness in France, and Pogacar is riding the Giro before the Tour and tends to suffer on monster mountain days, of which the Tour has a few.

Isaac del Toro is the real deal! Despite doing major domestique work for Ayuso, he still finished fourth on GC, ahead even of Ben O’Connor, who is flying this season. UAE has an embarrassment of riches, and del Toro, aged 20, is just another example of their impressive stable of young talent. It helps when the authoritarian government of a Middle Eastern Petrol State funds your cycling ambitions. But I digress.

Milan may be the next big thing in sprinting. I didn’t think he was a future TDF sprint stage winner, but his results here show that clearly, he can do it. He’s versatile, too, so I’m interested to see how he does at Milano-Sanremo.

Cian of Visma LAB did okay in 7th overall, but he probably would have expected to be a little higher up. Del Toro is looking like the bigger prospect.

Things I didn’t learn from Tirreno:

I sound like a broken record, but Pidcock is not a competitive GC rider (this has been apparent for years, and INEOS would be wise to abandon the project). He finished in 9th, a full four minutes down. That is, to put it lightly, a chasm, especially on a race with only one hard mountain.

Whether Thymen Arensman is a future Grand Tour podium contender. He finished 6th, but only 2:25 back (a minute behind Ayuso). He’s improving and not old, but the jury is still out. The level is just so high now that in almost every race, you have to do 6.5 w/kg for 20-30 minutes (or comparable efforts) and time trial well just to get on the podium.

Whether Philipsen is going to dominate TDF sprints like he did last year. Losing so many sprints early is not a great sign, but he said he isn’t in his best form yet.

That’s all for Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. I’ll have a Milano-Sanremo preview up this week.