Simon Yates wins Paris-Nice final stage but Primoz Roglic survives raid to seal overall win

A dangerous day for Primoz Roglic as he was attacked by some of his rivals but the Slovenian has this time resisted the offensive to seal the overall win at Paris-Nice after an incredible work by Wout van Aert. Simon Yates won the final stage after attacking on the final climb and holding on to his gap.

It was a rainy and windy day in Nice, not too different then the one that saw Roglic crash out of his overall win last year. A day where Jumbo were likely to be raided, however with a strong response early on as the Dutch team controlled the race and prevented any breakaway from going up the road, despite a multitude of attacks. The race stabilized until the Côte de Peille where a reduced peloton entered, INEOS Grenadiers accelerated the pace in anticipation to Daniel Martínez' attack attack which came with three kilometers to the summit.

Wout van Aert and Primoz Roglic had a ready answer, with Nairo Quintana and Simon Yates also following the wheel. With van Aert seemingly in control, he set the pace until the summit of the climb. Jumbo tried to get some collaboration in the front group to no success, as then van Aert went on to pace the descent all the way into the final climb. Martínez punctured in the descent loosing contact with the front group, and into the final climb it didn't take long until things kicked off again.

With it's very steep gradients near the base, it was no surprise that Roglic would quickly be attacked, as both Quintana and Yates attacked, however when the Briton made his move he faced no response, and grew his gap as Roglic struggled. Yates was trying to reel in the 47 seconds he had of disadvantage, as van Aert returned and then paced Roglic up the rest of the climb as Quintana cracked.

The gap reached a maximum of 25 seconds over the top but the Jumbo-Visma duo had the advantage on the descent and flat run-up to the finale. Everyone got through the descent safely as the gap came down, but despite at times looking like he couldn't Yates powered through the final kilometers to come home victorious.

More to come later...