{"id":924527,"date":"2026-10-11T18:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T18:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/924527\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T18:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T18:44:09","slug":"lease-a-bike-celebrates-another-victory-at-paris-tours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/924527\/","title":{"rendered":"Lease a Bike Celebrates Another Victory at Paris-Tours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Per Strand Hagenes won Paris-Tours. The 23-year-old Norwegian from Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> surprisingly emerged as the best rider in a small elite group in the final stretch, after countering a late breakaway by Toms Skujins. Jasper Stuyven finished second for Soudal Quick-Step, while Laporte\u2014 who had already won in 2024<\/a> \u2014rounded out the Visma celebration in third place.<\/p>\n

Paris-Tours was never boring from the start. After just about 10 kilometers, a strong breakaway group of twelve riders formed, including Yves Lampaert, Stefan Bissegger, Jakob S\u00f6derqvist, Jonas Rutsch, Matis Louvel, Julius van den Berg, and Martijn Rasenberg. The peloton never let the group get too far ahead, but their lead still grew to 3 minutes halfway through the race.<\/p>\n

Visma | Lease a Bike and Netcompany INEOS took charge of the chase for team leaders Christophe Laporte<\/a> and Dorian Godon for a long time, while the pace was exceptionally fast during the first two hours, with an average speed of over 48 kilometers per hour. Unfortunately for the Unibets Rose Rockets, Rasenberg was the first to drop out of the breakaway due to a flat tire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo<\/p>\n

Paris-Tours kicks off amid vineyards<\/p>\n

As expected, the race changed completely when, about 70 kilometers from the finish, the succession of climbs and unpaved vineyard roads began. The lead of the eleven remaining breakaway riders quickly dropped from just over two minutes to less than a minute, while the first attacks also began from within the peloton.<\/p>\n

Lewis Askey tried to break away, among other things, with defending champion Matteo Trentin close on his heels. At the front, the increased pace also proved too much for a large portion of the breakaway. Bissegger, Lampaert, Storm Ingebrigtsen, Louvel, and Van den Berg were ultimately the five who remained and tried together to breathe new life into their attack.<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the video<\/p>\n

Godon involved in a crash<\/p>\n

In the approaching peloton, a crash had major consequences for the rest of the race. Godon, who was among the top favorites following his victory in Gran Piemonte, went down. Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Intermarch\u00e9) and Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies) were also down. With 40 kilometers to go, the peloton was suddenly significantly thinned out, though a few groups did manage to catch up.<\/p>\n

On the C\u00f4te de la Vall\u00e9e Chartier, Pierre Gautherat (who will ride for UAE Emirates-XRG next year) launched an attack from the peloton, effectively ending the last breakaway\u2019s chances. The Frenchman gained a bit of a lead, but Per Strand Hagenes (Visma) and his Decathlon teammate Rasmus S\u00f8jberg Pedersen caught up. The pace slowed briefly, leaving thirty riders in the breakaway.<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo<\/p>\n

Elite group battles for victory at Paris-Tours<\/p>\n

On the final unpaved stretch of Rochecorbon and the subsequent C\u00f4te de Rochecorbon, the next breakaway immediately took shape. Decathlon CMA CGM applied pressure once again, and six riders managed to break away: Askey, Laporte, Hagenes, Jonas Abrahamsen, Paul Lapeira, and Thibaud Gruel. A strong group\u2014including Toms Skujins, Jasper Stuyven, and Florian S\u00e9n\u00e9chal\u2014managed to catch up, with the peloton close behind.<\/p>\n

Anything could still happen in the final 5 kilometers, knowing that the riders weren\u2019t allowed to look at each other. Skujins decided to make his move just before the final kilometer, knowing he wouldn\u2019t win a sprint anyway. Hagenes went after the Latvian to catch Laporte, but when the Norwegian opened up a gap, he decided to go for it and take the lead.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be a surprising and winning move, because since no real sprint developed behind him, Hagenes was able to stay ahead and win. It was his second victory of 2026, following the Antwerp Port Epic, and already his fifth career win. In the U23 category, H\u00e9ctor Alvarez took the win<\/a>; he had recently been crowned European champion in both the road race and the time trial at the U23 level.Results of the 2026 Paris-Tours<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Per Strand Hagenes won Paris-Tours. The 23-year-old Norwegian from Visma | Lease a Bike surprisingly emerged as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,248459,784,301239,85,23372],"class_list":["post-924527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-christophe-laporte","tag-cycling","tag-latest-cycling-news","tag-sports","tag-visma-lease-a-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}