All against Roglic

March 13 ^th 2021 - 05:11

Primoz Roglic made the first step towards Paris-Nice victory by finishing third in the individual time trial in Gien, took the reins thanks to his stage win in Chiroubles, tightened his grip with his sprint victory in Biot and the finish in La Colmiane could be the last act in his conquest of the Race to the Sun. Given the impression the Slovenian left so far in the race, he is the arch-favourite to retain and even strengthen his overall lead at the end of the 119.2-km ride to La Colmiane. The small ski resort has turned into a Paris-Nice classic in the last four years with two stage finishes won by Simon Yates in 2018 and by Nairo Quintana last year, when the 1st category climb marked the end of a shortened Race to the Sun clinched by Maximilian Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe). The German, second overall 41 seconds behind the two-times Vuelta winner, remains his leading challenger even if he is not a pure climber. But he knows the ascent well and showed last year he could compete with the very best in the mountains. After the crash that forced American Brandon McNulty out of the race in stage 6, the other challenge to Roglic’s ambitions will be mounted by the Astana pair of Ion Izagirre and Aleksandr Vlasov. Their team director Dmitry Fofonov promised to “invent something tactically” to try and upstage Roglic and the Kazakh team have other assets in Luis Leon Sanchez and Omar Fraile. The other climbers left in the race will be trying both to look for a stage win and to improve their GC position: France’s David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), Guillaume Martin (Cofidis), Warren Barguil (Arkea-Samsic) and Pierre Latour (Total Direct Energie) will be hoping to have their best legs on the day, while 2017 Paris-Nice winner Sergio Henao (Qhubeka-Assos), South African Louis Meintjes (Intermarché-Wanty Gobert) and Belgians Tiesj Benoot (DSM) or Thomas De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal) cannot be ruled out.