On the eve of Paris-Nice, Sport Director Christian Knees talks us through the challenge ahead, and explains why the \u2018Race to the Sun\u2019 is such a special event.<\/p>\n
Hi everyone. We are really excited to get started on Sunday here at Paris-Nice. It\u2019s a big, historic race and there is a traditional feel to the parcours this year. We start with two flat stages and the first one is definitely quite punchy. It\u2019s no secret when you start this race that normally there is some crosswind action on these early, flatter days, and maybe even later on in the race, you never know! So that\u2019s pretty exciting stuff and it\u2019s a challenge you have to relish when you race here.<\/p>\n
Right now it looks like we\u2019re set for quite good weather, which is unusual for Paris-Nice. But let\u2019s wait and see and we\u2019ll find out more each day as we draw closer. It\u2019s normally called the \u2018Race to the Sun\u2019 but it\u2019s not always true every year. We\u2019ve also had some bad weather in Nice too, certainly a couple of years ago. Let\u2019s see as this can make a big impact on how the race plays out.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a team time trial on stage three which is a big feature in the race this year and a big focus for teams. The Dauphine also has a TTT and this is obviously all leading towards the opening stage of the Tour de France in Barcelona. So that\u2019s a big test coming up. Then we have a couple of mid-mountain stages until we hit the last weekend around the Nice area. On stage seven we go to Auron and then the final day finishes around Nice. All in all it\u2019s going to be a really good test for our riders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the eve of Paris-Nice, Sport Director Christian Knees talks us through the challenge ahead, and explains why…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-462724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}