Paris-Nice Stage 6 Preview
A probable sprint finish but because today is the last chance for a stage win for everyone who can’t win in the mountains there’s a self-fulfilling chance for the breakaway. Plus the Mistral is blowing. La Côte qui grimpe: a warp speed start, 49km in the first hour and it took longer for the breakaway to form. Ben Swift was up the road again, this time with Thibaut Gruel, the youngest rider with the second oldest in the race. Jonas Vingegaard crashed mid-stage. It was déjà-vu as Swift acted as a relay for Tobias Foss who attacked with 42km to go. At the back Vingegaard was often last wheel in the peloton, a sure sign something was bothering him. The wall-like climbs were a good find for the race and thinned down the peloton with Vingegaard still in the group. With Foss caught we got an uphill battle on the final climb where it was too steep to attack. Instead Matteo Jorgenson piled on the power, this was the best thing to do as others had to react and anyone trying overtake a rival used up energy trying. Going into the final bend Harald Tejada tried to pass Jorgenson on the inside but got blocked and this opened up the road for Lenny Martinez to dart out and take the win. Jorgenson is back in yellow and not the best day for Danish fans as Mattias Skjelmose slipped down three places overall after losing 25 seconds to Jorgenson. For Martinez this is his biggest win so far. But is this wall-climb exactly the kind of finish he can excel in, or can he parlay this into Alpine-style grand tour stage victories? He, Bahrain and France want to know more. The Route: 210km south down the Rhone valley only it’s not a straight line. Once they reach the river delta for the second half of the stage the course zigs east and zags south. This means exposure to crosswinds for a lot of the stage, and there are some climbs and rises along the way where things are particularly exposed. The Finish: flat. There’s a left turn with 550m to go which is tight and then it opens up onto a curving boulevard. The Contenders: a sprint seems the most likely outcome and points competition leader Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) has the speed and lead-out to get a third stage win, rivals just don’t seem consistent enough. Pedersen’s chances will rise if the race splits in crosswinds and he’s part of a group sharing the work to the finish but today’s weather forecast feels conditional, the race could split rather than it is bound to. Weather: cloudy and cold, just 8°C with 15km/h Mistral from the north but this could gust to 45km/h and if sustained we’re into crosswind action. Paris-Nice reaches the Mediterranean today. As you can see Berre-l’Étang is not quite the jewel of the coast, indeed for years the large saline lake here has suffered massive industrial pollution because just out of the picture are vast petrochemical works. Berre itself had the old Shell site, now broken up – literally in some parts – and sold off to US firm LyondellBasell; while across the other side of the lake is Lavera, once the base of French oil giant Total but recently Ineos has been buying up plants from Total to the point where the two companies are very closely linked. This brings us to the mooted switch of TotalEnergies as a sponsor to the Ineos team, dropping the current French ProTeam. It’d been something to save for today but The Escape Collective ran with it earlier this week. Total’s deal with Jean-René “JR” Bernaudeau’s team expires at the end of the year and there’s no news on an extension. Having missed out on Julian Alaphilippe, the team French doesn’t have much star power and is already losing invitations. Meanwhile JR is 68 and looking at retirement, there’s been talk of succession planning but with no long term sponsorship the likes of Thomas Voeckler appear to have said a polite non merci; nobody internal has been annointed either. In short, sponsor switch or not the team has been heading towards the sunset. JR’s peer Marc Madiot has said he’s gone from being a shopkeeper to running a multinational but the structure behind the TotalEnergies team has remained more of a family business, for better and for worse. Mergers in cycling don’t work, Ineos and Total can’t combine teams as 28 riders plus 26 has fit into the cap of 30 riders per team; no team needs an extra two team buses, nor a second warehouse HQ lease. So there won’t really be a merger even if they tried. Still a French-backed Ineos team would want more French riders. Anthony Turgis and Mathieu Burgaudeau could be worth poaching; but Total would want bigger like Kévin Vauquelin, Valentin Madouas or David Gaudu. Which brings us to ambition and identity, if TotalEnergies does back Ineos the surprise would be seeing Total as co-sponsor of the Ineos team. It’s an oil major and not used to being the junior partner and seeing its branding diluted. It might prefer to buy the team outright instead or at least secure the full naming rights.
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