Consisting of eight stages starting near Paris and heading down to the French Riviera, The Race to the Sun is one of the biggest stage races in the world. Paris-Nice starts Sunday, March 9.
This year, the field is strong, though not quite as strong as the top as the past few years, as only one alien is participating.The sprint field is quite weak, as most of the top sprinters are in Italy at Tirreno-Adriatico. There is a lot of depth in the climbing ranks, which might push the non-top-five guys into breakaway attempts later in the week, especially as the Team Time Trial on Stage Three could knock a lot of riders on lesser teams out of contention.
But let’s back up and go through the GC contenders and sprinters/stage hunters before examining the route to see who can compete where, then I’ll make predictions for each stage and the GC podium.
GC Contenders: Jonas Vingegaard, Matteo Jorgenson, Santiago Buitrago, Joao Almeida, Brandon McNulty, Mattias Skjelmose, Aleksandr Vlasov, Ben O’Connor, Felix Gall, Florian Lipowitz
Sprinters: Tim Merlier, Mads Pedersen, Michael Matthews, Tobias Lund Andresen, Alexander Kristoff
Breakaway artists/puncheurs/stage hunters: Pavel Sivakov, Romain Bardet, Neilson Powless, Magnus Sheffield, Pablo Castrillo, Einer Rubio, and many more
Stage One (156.1km): A classic Paris-Nice stage with a couple 1kish 6ish percent climbs in the finale, the second one cresting exactly 10k from the flat finish. I’m not sure if that’s enough to disrupt the pure sprinters (the main man being Tim Merlier), but I think Lidl-Trek might try to hammer it for Mads Pedersen. It’s a good design that leaves the victory in the balance. I’ll predict Pedersen to win ahead of Michael Matthews in a reduced group after Merlier drops.
Stage Two (183.9km): A pan-flat sprint day that will probably be windy and cold. Merlier will win easily.
Stage Three (28.4km) (TTT): A bit of a lumpy circuit in this special TTT where every rider gets their actual time instead of a team time. This one is hard to call as team line-ups are not complete at the time of writing, but I would expect big teams like Visma | Lease a Bike, UAE Team Emirates – XRG, and RedBull – Bora -Hansgrohe to do well. Hopefully the gaps are not huge, so we see suspense on the mountains coming up.
Stage Four (163.4km): It’s a medium-mountain finish at about 7k/7%. That’s not crazy hard for a climbing field of this caliber, but with Jonas in the field, you can expect hard racing. He was bad on this mountain in 2023 when Tadej Pogacar and David Gaudu dropped him, but I expect him to light it up this time around. Jorgenson can do a crazy lead-out and Jonas will win handily.
Stage Five (200.3km): With about 2,600 vertical meters in 200k,, it does not seem too brutal, but there are a series of walls in the finale, with the finish 1.7km/10.8% including a 600m ramp of 15%. So this is a mini-Fleche Wallonne. I think Jonas wins here too, considering I believe he could podium the real Fleche and non of the guys who would beat him are at Paris-Nice. Do not underestimate this stage to create gaps, particularly if Visma launches a few climbs before the finish.The final 50k could be brutal with six short climbs all between 7-11 percent and almost no flat. Buitrago should be excellent here and I’ll take him for second.
Stage Six (209.8km): A long basically flat day for the sprinters. I’ll stick with Merlier.
Stage Seven (147.8km): The Queen Stage with 3,700m of climbing and a finish at 7k/7%, though there is a long false-flat run-in. Jonas will win here too, why not.
Stage Eight (119.9km): The traditional short, sharp day around Nice with 2,700 climbing meters in under 120km. The decisive climb is 3.6k at nearly 9 percent and peaks less than 10k from the finish line. I’ll go for a breakaway to make it here with no greedy Pogacar in the race. Brandon McNulty wins.
Final GC Prediction: 1). Jonas Vingegaard 2). Santiago Buitrago 3). Matteo Jorgenson
Excited for this one!
Jamie
Puncheur 
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