Riders of Paris-Nice, the Race to the Sun, will be relieved that they moved a little nearer to the sun on Wednesday’s fourth stage, one that provided a huge plot twist as the chaos of inclement conditions and slippery roads claimed race leader Juan Ayuso. With other GC riders also feeling nature’s wrath, Jonas Vingegaard’s stage win allowed him to take over the race lead in the major shakeup.
Preliminaries
On Tuesday’s team time trial stage, Lidl-Trek’s second place to winning squad Ineos by two seconds put Juan Ayuso into the yellow leader’s jersey at the expense of Stage 1 winner Luke Lamperti. Ineos duo Kevin Vauquelin and Oscar Onley were very close behind Ayuso, Vingegaard at +0:16.
The Course
Organizers stuck three moderate climbs into the final third of Wednesday’s route: a Cat. 3 to open proceedings, a Cat. 2 and a Cat. 1 summit finish, mild at first before the final 1.8 km at 10.7 percent.
Quite early in the stage, in the crosswinds and rain, the peloton split, with only white jersey Vauquelin of the GC men missing out on the 40-strong front group but Canada’s Nickolas Zukowsky accounted for. Ayuso had two teammates, Onley three and Vingegaard one. These forty leading riders covered 53 km in the first hour. The enormous chase toiled in pursuit. Onley was involved in a crash but teammates helped him tag back on.
By Cat. 3 Côte de la Croix des Cerisiers at the 133-km mark, the gap had stabilized to 1:10, but the leading group was smaller.
Next up was the penultimate climb, Cat. 2 Côte de la Croix de la Liberation. Onley’s misfortune continued with a mechanical along the way. Worse luck was Ayuso’s: he crashed with Brandon McNulty and other, which led to a split in the peloton. Lying on the side of the road in great distress, Ayuso’s early season momentum came to an abrupt end.
Vingegaard carried on in a small, Red Bull-dominated front group, collecting maximum bonus seconds at the day’s intermediate sprint and a single KOM point atop Côte de la Croix de la Liberation.
There was little chance that Vingegaard wasn’t going to try to dislodge Dani Martinez and his Red Bull pals on the final climb. Sure enough, at the red kite he launched. The gaps were massive between riders.
Four sharp little climbs are…
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