Final Day Flourish Sees Jonas Vingegaard Crush Paris-Nice GC

Jonas Vingegaard sent a clear message to Tour de France rivals such as Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel on Sunday, sealing his overall win with dominance at Paris-Nice. The Danish Visma-Lease a Bike rider dropped all bar Lenny Martinez 21km from the finish and while the latter took the stage, Vingegaard raced to a stunning GC win.

Vingegaard was visibly stronger in the finale. Rather than allowing the Frenchman to take the final stage as a reward for his collaboration, he disputed the sprint, forcing Martinez to lead out in the final kilometer. He then tried to lunge by before the line, but appeared to leave it too late and came up just short.

However the distancing of all of his GC rivals saw him end the race 4:23 ahead of Dani Martínez (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who crashed during the stage. Georg Steinhauser (EF Education-EasyPost) was next, finishing 6:07 behind.

The gaps are staggering for an eight day event, and Vingegaard’s dominance is further underlined by his two stage wins, plus victories in the points and mountains classifications.

The final winning margin was the fourth-biggest in the history of the event, with the other three occurring back in the 1930s.

“Today was almost the perfect day,” he smiled. “We had a lot of fun today, we raced full gas all day.”

‘Beating Jonas is even more special’

The final stage crossed three category one climbs and Vingegaard’s crucial acceleration came on the last of those, the Côte du Linguador.

He put in a searing acceleration with 21km to go, with Martinez straining to hold his wheel, and the two then worked together on the run in towards the finish. Often a GC winner will allow a breakaway companion to share the spoils but on this occasion, Vingegaard really wanted to reach the line first.

“Of course I would have loved to win the stage as well but Lenny was very strong,” he said. “He deserves to win as well.”

They were seven seconds clear of the next group, led in by Harold Tejada (XDS Astana Team).

Martinez’s result was his first victory of the year, following on from podium finishes in the Faun-Ardèche Classic and the Faun Drome Classic.

“’I’d been chasing this win since the start of the season.,” he said. “Beating Jonas after going on a raid with him makes it even more special!”

Martinez’s GC chances more or less ended in the team time trial on stage 3 when his Bahrain-Victorious team was over a minute behind the winners Ineos Grenadiers, dropping 49 seconds to Vingegaard’s squad.

However he is exiting this race in fine form and with a big morale boost prior to the Ardennes classics.

Vingegaard also has more pep in his step, and will feel psyched looking towards the Volta Catalunya and the Giro d’Italia.