Jonas Vingegaard will be aiming for a statement performance in Paris-Nice. 📸 A.S.O/Morgan Bove.
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While attention is on Strade Bianche ahead of Saturday’s racing, the weekend also sees the return of WorldTour stage racing action, with the men’s peloton descending on France for Paris-Nice.
The field is stacked with Jonas Vingegaard finally starting his season after several setbacks in February, and highly rated opposition coming in the form of Juan Ayuso, João Almeida and Oscar Onley.
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We also have several riders under pressure to perform after slow starts, as well as breakaway stars and sprinters also vying for results.
I’ll be at the final four days of the race too, and after weekend analysis from Strade Bianche, I’ll be turning my full attention towards the French race. To kick-start our coverage, here are 10 riders to keep an eye on during the race. We’ll also have an exclusive feature on Juan Ayuso in the next couple of days.
Daniel 🫶
Paris-Nice objective: Build up a solid platform and win the GC
Come Saturday evening, the likely narrative will be as follows. Tadej Pogačar will have dominated the opposition at Strade Bianche, and the characteristic headlines will set the stage for an undisputed Tour de France victory later in the year. After taking a record-setting fourth win on Tuscan dirt roads, who could even think about stopping him?
Meanwhile, Jonas Vingegaard will be heading to a bland hotel outside Paris ahead of his season debut on Sunday. If that sounds a little bleak for those wanting to see a thrilling Tour this summer, remember that Vingegaard hasn’t even ridden competitively in 2026 and is already under immense pressure.
His best climbing domestique for the Giro decided to quit the sport rather than earn around 2 million Euros a year to help. His long-term coach has left, he’s missed the UAE Tour, been sick, and crashed, with the incident thoroughly picked apart by the media. All of this sits against the backdrop of how unsettled everything seemed for the Dane last summer. Granted, a Vuelta win was a welcome tonic, but it’s March now, and Vingegaard’s Giro d’Italia bid is just two months away.
In some quarters, Vingegaard’s signal to race the Giro has been interpreted as raising the white flag come the Tour, but there’s another strand of thought to his aims on racing the double – and that’s that he’s put himself even under greater scrutiny had he instead decided to simply run it back and target the Tour.
He must beat João Almeida and his other rivals to the maglia rosa; anything less than a GC victory would be considered a disaster, especially if it comes at the hands of Pogačar’s second or third in command. While May is more significant than March, this remains a major race for the Dane.
On Sunday, at the start in Achères, he will face questions about his off-season and the less-than-ideal course his campaign has taken so far, but once the race begins, the Dane, at the very least, needs to get through the eight days of racing. There are no easy stages in Paris-Nice; even the sprint stages are fraught with danger and obstacles. However, if he emerges from the week unscathed, whether on the podium or even victorious, some of the doubts and questions surrounding Vingegaard’s form and morale will at least have been addressed. For now.