Paris-Nice: Luke Lamperti surges at front of bunch sprint to secure signature win on opening stage

The 2026 Race to the Sun started out with a 171.2km stage from Achères to Carrières-sous-Poissy in the Yvelines department of the Parisian outskirts. It was a lightly undulating day, with two minor categorised climbs ahead of the two laps of the 16.5km finishing circuit, which featured the short-but-steep Côte de Chanteloup-les-Vignes (1.1km at 8.3%).

Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike competes during stage 1 across 170.9 kilometres (Image credit: Getty Images)

After around 10km of attacking, the day’s breakaway was formed by six riders: Casper Pedersen (Soudal-QuickStep), Max Walker (EF Education-EasyPost), Sébastien Grignard (Lotto Intermarché), Mathis Le Berre (TotalEnergies), and the Jayco-AlUla duo of Patrick Gamper and Luke Durbridge.

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They weren’t given much rope by the peloton, largely marshalled by EF, Picnic-PostNL, and NSN Cycling. The gap hovered below a minute for a while in the early stages, but creeped out to 90 seconds with 100km to go.

The peloton climbs during stage 1 of Paris-Nice (Image credit: Getty Images)

It was a quiet affair until the first climb of the Côte de Gargenville (2.3km at 4.7%), where Pedersen outsprinted Walker for maximum mountains points from the break. Pedersen repeated the trick on the Côte de Vaux-sur-Seine (1.4km at 7%), and the breakaway rolled through the finish line with 33km to go with a lead of just over a minute.

It was soon over to the first ascent of the Côte de Chanteloup-les-Vignes, where Pedersen once again skipped clear of the rest to ensure he’ll be wearing the polka-dot jersey as mountains classification leader on stage 2. Back in the peloton, Visma had started to work, which helped bring the gap back under the mini mark.

However, as they started the second ascent of the Côte de Chanteloup-les-Vignes and the final climb of the day, there was still all to play for, with 50 seconds the gap with 12km remaining. Le Berre this time kicked clear of Pedersen atop the climb as the break started to fragment, though Durbridge was the only one who was dropped from it.

Back in the bunch, there were a couple of attacks, which saw Vingegaard alive and marshalling four wheels from the front. There were attacks from the bunch after the descent, too, which saw the gap plummet to 25 seconds, but then the peloton collectively eased off, allowing it to grow back out to 35 seconds inside the final 10km.

That left a tense finale in which the breakaway went all the way to the door of the final kilometre. Visma initially helped get things back under control before the sprint trains started to wind up, with the catch of most of the break made 2km from the line and Grignard the last to be swallowed 1,300 metres from home.

That didn’t leave too much time before the sprint, which was complicated by a narrow left-hand bend just inside the final kilometre, where Martinez was one of the riders to slide out. Up ahead, EF found themselves in the driving seat, and even if Van den Berg had to produce a long lead-out, he was able to slingshot Lamperti towards a win that will do wonders for himself and his team.