Olav Kooij outsprints Mads Pedersen to take victory on electric opening to Paris-Nice 2024
CyclingSunday, 03 March 2024 at 16:51
The 2024 edition of Paris-Nice has opened with a bang! With the GC riders already coming to the fore and putting in early testers for their rivals, Olav Kooij eventually outsprinted Mads Pedersen in tight finale.
With three men taking to the breakaway, Mathieu Burgaudeau of TotalEnergies and EF Education-EasyPost duo, Stefan Bissegger and Jonas Rutsch, the peloton never really allowed them a potentially stage winning gap.
Their day out on the attack was brought to and with just under 40km to go as the peloton reorganised and prepared to head towards a bunch finale.
With bonus seconds on offer at the intermediate sprint with just under 18km to go, the GC man came to the fore. Team Visma | Lease a Bike's Matteo Jorgenson took the maximum 6 seconds on offer, Remco Evenepoel taking 4 with Egan Bernal picking up 2.
After the sprint, Evenepoel actually kept his acceleration going, with Jorgenson and Bernal right on his wheel as were two Lotto Dstny riders, covering the move for their sprint hopeful, Arnaud De Lie.
Although the move was eventually reeled back in, damage was done with the likes of Dylan Groenewegen and Fabio Jakobsen both out the back of the bunch.
With 13km to go, on the final climb of the day, Evenepoel went again with Bernal and Primoz Roglic quickly sniffing the danger and latching onto the back wheel of the Belgian.
Even though the winds weren't high, the relentlessly attacking nature of the racing was seeing different groups form all the way down the road.
The next man to make a move was Anthony Turgis, with the Frenchman actually gaining around 19 seconds by the time the race crossed the 5km to go marker.
Turgis was caught with around 2km to go, with more and more of the sprinters who'd been dropped earlier in the day, regaining contact with the front of the bunch.
In the sprint, Mads Pedersen was the first to open the sprint, but he couldn't hold on as Olav Kooij came around right at the death to secure victory with Laurence Pithie completing the podium.
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- It's irrelevant whether the riders will oppose safety measures or not. The UCI have demonstrated time and again that they don't care what the riders think. The UCI will implement whatever they want (which based on recent history, has nothing related to rider safety anyway). Also, it's not like the riders have a vote anyway, so it's a hilarious and irrelevant point that you are making.Pogboom03-05-2025
- He forgets Landa, Merlier who have won or come close. if Remco leaves you simply become a sprint oriented team with talent already present. Sponsors have Remco on this team they are not going to get that chance with the big teams anyway when Remco moves. Also Remco's value isnt as high as before due to Pogi and Jonasabstractengineer03-05-2025
- The root cause of most crashes are the riders and do you know who will oppose the introduction of a new safety device-The riders.abstractengineer03-05-2025
- you’re everything wrong about our worldmij03-05-2025
- "Mathieu has also cleaned up everything on the road in the past two years" This year he was given a fight by Pogi in MSR and PR. and he was defeated in Flanders. In other races he is not even close to winning. There was no cleanup.abstractengineer03-05-2025
- Surely people had more fun watching you and your old "coworkers" saving energy for 4-5 hours and attacking the last 500 meters. Uff.. very funny. Typical resentful "old" cyclists against an incredibly talented (and disruptive) young man.
maria2024202403-05-2025 - What's more pressure than trying to beat MVDP in a one-day sprinter's classic? It's like trying to win a grand tour stage in a bunch sprint.. They both put each other in the pressure cooker, but JV needs to win, in my opinion, more than TP. Throw in Primoz and Remco in the climber's mix, and its going to be an exciting TDF.FredMan03-05-2025
- You're saying you'd rather believe LA than TP? Both great competitors but 2 different personalities altogether..FredMan03-05-2025
- Oh hey, thats a period and not a comma! You’re right. I did misread that. My apologies to the original post! Sorry ‘bout that, abstractengineer, thanks for pointing this out, mij.RidesHills03-05-2025
- Why would you expect cycling to be different than any other sport? World Tour riders pass tests in and out of competition, so the playing field is as level as can be found in any high level competition.
Barney02-05-2025
It's really to bad the US viewers on Peacock have to suffer with listening to the commentary of Bob Roll and Christian VandeVelde ! We get spoiled with the Eurosport/GCN people over the years and then we get these clowns for Paris-Nice and other high profile races during the year.
Half the time Roll sounds like he's hitting puberty and CVV with is "Bobbie' references is nauseating...just a bunch of fan boys commentating.
I agree- the banter between the two and the hyperbole makes me gag.
Also, what’s the deal with the bonus seconds? When do they get included?
Anyone have an opinion on 2nd place gets to wear a jersey when 1st place is promoted to a better one? I think it sucks. If the first guy in a category gets to wear the overall jersey, I don’t think anyone else should wear the category jersey until he loses the overall.
If I remember right, if at the end of the race you win overall and category you get both jerseys so why play around with this during the race?