‘I have my winter pants’ – Paris-Nice leader Jonas Vingegaard ready for poor weather on Saturday but emphasises safety priorities

One day less. Paris-Nice leader Jonas Vingegaard was in an understandably upbeat mood after coming through a tough stage 6 of Paris-Nice with no setbacks or major challenges to his yellow jersey. At the same time, the Visma-Lease a Bike racer was also very aware of the looming risks of poor weather that could threaten the race’s closing weekend.

Snow is forecast for Saturday in the Alps of southern France, potentially putting the planned summit finish at the ski station of Auron at risk for the second time in three years.

Clad in his polka-dot jersey as mountains leader, the double stage winner later told CyclingProNet and other media that “tomorrow is a bit of a question mark still, so let’s see what’s possible.” Then he added half-jokingly, “I have my winter pants, so I wouldn’t say I hope we go to the finish, that wouldn’t be nice even with my winter pants.

“But they might even come out tomorrow. Time will tell.”

Earlier this week, Vingegaard had criticised the race after stage 1, regarding what he viewed as a dangerous downhill to Sunday’s finish just outside Paris, and he rapidly veered into the same area during his impromptu press conference five days later when it came to the very different terrain the peloton will face nearly a week later.

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“I also have to trust ASO have safety of the riders in mind, I believe they have a plan B or something that they will do instead,” he said.

ASO were certainly more than prepared to alter the stage two years ago when it became impossible to reach Auron due to heavy snow, substituting it for another climb. Last year, although the race did make it up the category 1 climb – with a solo win for Australian Michael Storer (Tudor) – they also scratched two earlier climbs after the descents were judged too risky in the poor weather.

Come what may this weekend, Vingegaard is one day closer to claiming his first-ever overall victory in Paris-Nice and on Friday, despite some hard work from tireless Visma teammate Victor Campenaerts to reel in the remnants of the early break, he had not planned to attack to try and take a third win in as many stages, he later said. Rather, the Belgian’s impressive climbing effort was to set things up for the Dutch squad’s sprinter, Axel Zingle.

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“To be honest, no. I don’t really like it when it’s downhill in the finish, and this was even quite dangerous. Then I just wanted to get safely to the finish,” he said about his decision not to attack.

“We wanted to make sure the break got caught,” he explained later.

“But it was a thin line because we also wanted to have Axel with us over the top, so we had to go hard, but we couldn’t go all out. Then, when the other [GC] guys wanted to attack, I followed them.

“It ended up not being an easy day, and the whole day was quite hard again. But we made it to the finish.”

Vingegaard has one of the largest GC advantages in recent Paris-Nice history at this point, being 3:22 ahead of Dani Martínez (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe). But the biggest challenges of his year still lie ahead, and so, he insisted, does his top form.

“I think my shape is pretty good right now, but I’m not my best yet, ” he concluded – something his rivals for the Giro d’Italia and even Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) for the Tour de France, will doubtless be interested to hear.