Rain, sleet, hail, snow
As riders hustled to get their rain gear from team cars and wriggled into them, the race organizers debated what to do as the precipitation turned into a downpour and the roads became slick, even icy in spots. In addition, snow was falling at the finish line, at the summit of the final climb (6.7 km @ 7.1%). Finally, with about 45 km left to ride, the race jury announced that the race would be neutralized for as long as the treacherous conditions persisted, and the peloton came to a complete stop.
At the time of the stoppage, an eight-rider breakaway had a lead of 2:20 over the peloton. In addition, thanks to a dominant team time trial on Tuesday, Visma–Lease a Bike’s Matteo Jorgenson led the GC by six seconds over teammate Jonas Vingegaard, with Jayco AlUla’s Michael Matthews and Ben O’Connor sitting third and fourth, at 21 seconds.
Eventually, the break was allowed to restart with 28 km remaining, and the three riders who had been chasing—Josh Tarling, Tobias Foss (both INEOS Grenadiers), and Dion Smith (Intermarché-Wanty)—were allowed to start 1:35 later. The peloton then started riding again at 2:20 behind the breakaway. However, while the weather had improved and the road surfaces had dried sufficiently for the race to resume, temperatures remained very cold, and riders could be seen shaking their arms or slapping their chests to get some warmth back into their bodies.
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Vingegaard miscalculates (again)
The breakaway was eventually caught as the GC favorites and their teams prepared for the final showdown on the ascent. This culminated in what turned out to be a premature attack by Vingegaard, who again overestimated his form—as he had in 2023 on the same climb—and was once again caught by a UAE Team Emirates–XRG rider, this time João Almeida, who beat him to the line by one second. In 2023, it was Tadej Pogačar who caught and bested him by 46 seconds on that climb.
After the race, Vingegaard did not mince his words in criticizing the decision to restart the race.
“I have quite mixed feelings today—or not even mixed feelings; I’m just not really happy at the moment because, in my opinion, we should never have raced this final, and we should never have continued when we did,” he told CyclingProNet afterward. “I wouldn’t say [that it was] too dangerous, but it was more that we were riding more than 10 to 12 km downhill and going super slow, and everyone was freezing. Nobody could feel their brakes. Then we had five to ten minutes to warm up again, but you don’t really get the heat back, and I still haven’t. I’m still cold.”
It was so cold that many riders were literally shaking, and Steff Cras of TotalEnergies was forced to abandon due to hypothermia.
Chaos & confusion
Jorgenson, the defending Paris-Nice champion, also told CyclingProNet that he was less than delighted with how the race was handled, especially regarding communication with the riders. Apparently, some riders were not informed that the race would restart under neutralized conditions.
“There was no explanation at all,” Vingegaard’s teammate said. “They stopped us, and all the cars came up, and we started putting on different clothes, like more jackets, because it was really raining hard. We really stopped at the coldest moment, I think.
“Suddenly, when I was at the back of the [team] car, I saw the red car with a bunch of riders behind it just take off—no explanation—so I jumped on my bike and chased for 10 km. Then when we got back, they had stopped again. Then they decided to restart us, so it was really like big ups and downs and a lot for the body to take in. I just pushed for like 10 km just to get warm again—I didn’t even know if we were racing.”
Jorgenson finished sixth in the stage, six seconds behind Almeida, and dropped out of the GC lead into second place, five seconds behind Vingegaard.
However, neither of the Visma riders blamed Vingegaard’s defeat on the weather.
“I’m mainly disappointed,” the Dane was quoted as saying on the race website. “I was in the lead until the last 25 meters, but in the end, I was beaten, and he deserves his victory. I don’t think we should have raced in these conditions—we were all shivering. But after all, everyone suffered in this weather.”
Lidl-Trek’s GC contender Mattias Skjelmose said the cold affected his performance.
“I really see it at peak power, at the accelerations, when the legs are frozen,” he said. “I suffered a lot from this. I really went deep in the last 200 meters—it was not fun.”
However, he went on to say that he was quite happy with his third-place finish in the stage.
“Despite everything, I lost only two seconds to João and one second to Jonas, so that’s not a bad result.” He now sits third in the GC standings, 33 seconds behind Vingegaard.
