{"id":529787,"date":"2026-03-11T19:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T19:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/529787\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T19:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T19:42:12","slug":"vingegaard-wins-ayuso-crashes-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/529787\/","title":{"rendered":"Vingegaard Wins, Ayuso Crashes Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ayuso, McNulty among 12 DNFs, Vingegaard surges into the overall lead with victory in brutal conditions.<\/p>\n

\"Ayuso\"<\/p>\n

Juan Ayuso crashes out of Paris-Nice while in the lead. (Photo: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Updated March 11, 2026 01:20PM<\/p>\n

Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> climbed into the Paris-Nice<\/a> lead in a disaster day for Juan Ayuso<\/a> and Ineos Grenadiers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brutal cold and rain triggered a wave of crashes, including a high-speed crash involving overnight leader Ayuso with about 45km to go in Wednesday\u2019s third stage.<\/p>\n

The Spanish rider collapsed on the ground in pain after remounting his bike in a fall with about 45km to go in the first mountaintop finale at the French stage race.<\/p>\n

Ineos Grenadiers riders Oscar Onley and Kevin Vauquelin were distanced earlier in the stage, unable to capitalize on gains after nudging into the top 3 with Tuesday\u2019s TTT win.<\/p>\n

Vingegaard avoided the traps and jumped with 1km to go on the first uphill finale of the \u201cRace to the Sun\u201d was anything but.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am incredibly happy and proud to have won a stage like this. This was probably one of the hardest-fought victories of my career,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was full gas right from the start. The conditions didn\u2019t help. I think a lot of people were very cold, but luckily that didn\u2019t bother me. I had chosen to wear a lot of clothes and that was a good decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dane doubled up, winning the stage and slipping into the leader\u2019s jersey in a stage that blew up the French stage race to open his 2026 account with a bang.<\/p>\n

12 riders DNF in brutal conditions
\n\"Vingegaard\"Vingegaard survived horrendous conditions to win the stage and take yellow. (Photo: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Behind Vingegaard, the peloton was left in tatters.<\/p>\n

Ayuso was grimacing in pain and clutching his left side. He was transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately, X-rays performed at the hospital in France did not reveal any fractures for Ayuso. A further clinical assessment performed by the team doctor on-site at the team hotel has also ruled out any other serious injuries,\u201d team officials said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another setback for Lidl-Trek<\/a>, which also lost classics star Mads Pedersen to injury earlier this season.<\/p>\n

Ayuso started in the yellow leader\u2019s jersey, leading Vingegaard by 17 seconds going into the decisive stage.<\/p>\n

Other riders crashed out, including Brandon McNulty, in a cold, messy stage. In total, 12 racers did not make it to the line.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ayuso, McNulty among 12 DNFs, Vingegaard surges into the overall lead with victory in brutal conditions. Juan Ayuso…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[168574,49,48,635,62140,82,56902,77319,57421,62849,62508,54267],"class_list":["post-529787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-audio-true","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-parent_category-news","tag-sports","tag-tag-american-racing","tag-tag-brandon-mcnulty","tag-tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-tag-juan-ayuso","tag-tag-lidl-trek","tag-type-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}