Paris-Nice: Nazon Takes Advantage of a Bad Corner, Sprints to Victory

By Jessica | Permalink | No Comments | March 12th, 2007 | Trackback

AG2R’s Jean-Patrick Nazon took stage 1 of Paris-Nice, and even seemed to serve as his own lead-out man. Going into the final straight, he jumped off the front of the pack, and though they were right on his tail at the line, Nazon had enough left to keep the wolves at bay.

The final few km were a little dodgy, as there was a sharp left-hander where too many guys tried to come around the inside of the curve and cut off the peloton. Stupid idea. They’re lucky they didn’t crash, although the end result was nearly the same, as plenty of riders were forced to stop quickly and wait for the bottleneck to ease up. All the sprinters’ teams lost their perfect lead-out trains as a result, leaving the victory up for grabs.

I’ll be back later when there are links at the news sites; I’ve been watching the Cycling.tv coverage at the lowest datarate this morning because of technical difficulties, so I can’t even read the rest of the finishing list… All that will have to wait.

UPDATE: I don’t know what’s up with CyclingNews lately, but they haven’t even had live coverage of the prologue or stage one of Paris-Nice. And I’m pretty sure they did last year. Are they on vacation? Anyway, here’s their post-race writeup.

The top ten finishers today were:
1 Jean-Patrick Nazon (Fra) Ag2r Prévoyance 4.29.39 (41.386 km/h)
2 Sebastian Siedler (Ger) Milram
3 Mathew Hayman (Aus) Rabobank
4 Daniele Bennati (Ita) Lampre-Fondital
5 Vicente Reynes (Spa) Caisse d’Epargne
6 Igor Astarloa (Spa) Milram
7 Murilo Fischer (Bra) Liquigas
8 Tom Boonen (Bel) Quickstep-Innergetic
9 Guennadi Mikhailov (Rus) Astana
10 Jérôme Pineau (Fra) Bouygues Telecom

And the top ten overall now are:
1 David Millar (GBr) Saunier Duval-Prodir 4.35.40
2 Roman Kreuziger (Cze) Liquigas 0.01
3 Luis León Sánchez (Spa) Caisse d’Epargne 0.02
4 Alberto Contador (Spa) Discovery Channel
5 Sébastien Joly (Fra) Française Des Jeux
6 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Discovery Channel 0.03
7 Francisco José Ventoso (Spa) Saunier Duval-Prodir 0.04
8 Thomas Lövkvist (Swe) Française Des Jeux
9 Remmert Wielinga (Ned) Saunier Duval-Prodir
10 Joost Posthuma (Ned) Rabobank 0.05

Bennati takes over the lead in the points competition, and if he can get himself a stage win tomorrow he could take the yellow jersey off Millar’s shoulders (at least temporarily).

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