A team time trial? No, that was not what was on the programme of the first Paris-Nice 2022 stage today. However, 3 riders of the Jumbo-Visma team arrived together in a breakaway on the finish line and the trio decided to leave the victory to Christophe Laporte!
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The summary of the first stage of Paris-Nice 2022: Mantes-la-Ville > Mantes-la-Ville
The first stage of Paris-Nice 2022 started in Mantes-la-Ville early this afternoon for a loop in the Val d'Oise and in the Yvelines before a final short loop of 17.7 km around the finish city (total distance of the stage: 159.8 km). While the first stage of Paris-Nice often ends in a bunch sprint, it was going to be totally different today!At kilometer 4, the first attack was launched by Matthew Holmes (Lotto Soudal), who was rapidly joined by Aimé de Gendt (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux) and this leading duo created a gap of up to 3'10" after 30 kilometers in the race.
On the top of the côte de Vétheuil (km 32.9), the gap was slightly down to 2'45", when Holmes took the maximum number of points. The same would happen on the top of the côte de la route des Crêtes (km 59.5), where the gap was again up a little bit, at 2'55".Nothing much happened in the race in the long kilometers which would follow, but the leading duo again started to lose time in the second half of the race and after 70 kilometers they only had 50 seconds left on the peloton. From there, things went rather quickly and the two riders in the breakaway saw the peloton come back on them at kilometer 87, while there were still more than 70 kilometers to go.
With the high speed created by different teams at the head of the peloton, the opportunities to break out were scarce until the turnaround point in Houdan where the riders got exposed to head wind. Frederik Frison attacked at 45 kilometers from the finish and he was immediately joined by Alexis Gougeard (B&B Hotels-KTM) and Yevgeniy Fedorov (Astana-Qazaqstan Team) and when getting on the final circuit their gap was up to 1'10".At the first crossing of the finish line this gap however dropped back to 30 seconds already and it continued to go down, with the leading trio finally being taken back at 11 kilometers of the finish.
In the climb of the final hill of today's stage, the Côte de Breuil-Bois-Robert, the Jumbo-Visma team took up the lead, especially thanks to the efforts by Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte who got away from the peloton this way, taking with them Primož Roglič. Of course these three riders were made to be able to work together and managed to create a real gap on the peloton in the last kilometers. When they had a 20 seconds gap on the peloton at 2 kilometers of the finish, it started to look good for the Dutch team which could start to think about the stage win.The main question which remained was of course who among these 3 riders would have the honor to take the stage victory. Indeed, that rider was about to take the maximum of bonus seconds (10 seconds), ahead of the 6 seconds for the 2nd and 4 for the 3rd. These seconds might be precious for a rider like Roglič, one of the candidates for the overall victory, even though he failed at this in the last stage. In the end, it was Christophe Laporte, never before winner in a UCI WorldTour race, who had the honor to cross the finish line first and thus dress up with the yellow jersey as the leader of the general classification.
The video summary of the first stage of Paris-Nice 2022
📷 © A.S.O. / Alex Broadwaydoor Thomas Vergouwen
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