The full 2023 Paris-Nice route has been presented, with the March 5-12 stage race including two summit finishes and a 32.2km team time trial.
A team time trial has not featured in Paris since 1993 and in what represents a game-changer alternation in the race regulations, times for each team will be taken on the first rider from each team to cross the line, not the fourth or fifth.
Other standout features of the 2023 Paris-Nice route are a tough summit finish on stage 4 at the Les Loges de Gardes ski station, a stage 6 ‘wall stage’ that would do credit to any Tirreno-Adriatico route, and a return to the Paris-Nice’s highest summit finish, last used in 2017, at the Col de la Couillole on the final Saturday.
More familiar elements from this formidably complex route are two early flat stages where cross-winds and echelons are likely, and the showdown stage round Nice on Sunday 12th that so nearly poleaxed last year’s winner Primoz Roglič (Jumbo-Visma).
Roglič is not taking part this year as he recovers from off-season operations on his shoulder, meaning Tour de France winner and teammate Jonas Vingegaard will lead Jumbo-Visma and be one of the pre-race favourites.
David Gaudu, Christophe Laporte, Arnaud Démare, Romain Bardet, Florian Sénéchal, Simon Yates, Daniel Martinez and Stefan Küng are also expected to contest the so-called ‘Race to the sun’.
The 1,201 kilometre 2023 Paris-Nice route kicks off with a circular course starting and finishing at the town of La Verriere just west of Paris on March 5th, and then following that up with another tricky, fraught run through exposed terrain just south of the capital to Fontainbleau.
In two words, cross-winds and splits in the peloton beckon, although sprinters Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe), Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) and Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) will be eying these stages as well.
Paris-Nice history, culminating in last year’s dramatic opening leg where Jumbo-Visma clinched all three top spots after a cunning late breakaway, strongly suggests an early GC hierarchy could have emerged after these two stages. The race’s first team time trial on stage 3 since ONCE swept the Paris-Nice field back in 1993 at Roanne could well have an even more striking effect.
The 32.2km distance is double that of the last two individual time trials in the 2021 and 2022 editions of Paris-Nice. Yet the key difference is that times will be taken on the first rider to cross the finish line rather than the fourth…
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