Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar duel at Paris-Nice

Jonas Vingegaard, Tadej Pogacar and Egan Bernal, winners of the Tour of France since 2019, were no older than 25 at the moments of their triumphs. This trio and other strong contemporaries stand for the trend in cycling that racers are able to achieve outstanding performance earlier and earlier. The generation of young champions, who seems to have sent some of the newly established champions into old age in cycling, has more to offer for their sport than their freshness and youth. And a different driving style.

In the 1990s and also in the 2000s, for the strongest tour specialists, it was still the case that before July everything was geared towards the Tour de France and after July the season was almost over. Today’s extra talents – Tadej Pogacar is the best example – refuse to channel their season into just the three weeks in France. Rather, they love to spread their chances of success throughout the year, which means being in strong shape for several weeks a year and reaching for wins.

Kick-off for tour campaigns

It is therefore to be expected that the stars will not only roll along on the Paris-Nice long-distance journey that begins this Sunday, but will also send out powerful signals. Especially since there will be an early direct duel between the last three tour winners: Pogacar (2020 and 2021), Jonas Vingegaard (2022) and Egan Bernal (2019) will compete in March in the so-called “Race to the Sun”. And above all, a serious clash between Pogacar and Vingegaard and their highly armored teams is to be expected.

Not a first form check, but rather the start of the respective tour campaigns. Heading south, this week-long race includes a team time trial, a mountain finish in La Loge des Gardes on day four and the long climb up the Col de la Couillole on day seven before the event traditionally ends on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice goes.

If the significantly weaker team around Pogacar was considered a main reason for the tour triumph of Vingegaard, flanked by the excellent team Jumbo-Visma, the last summer’s losers reacted to this with considerable use of funds. The Slovenian superstar’s Team UAE has upgraded enormously with well-known new signings – and with eleven race wins in this still young season it has really got going.

Some of which goes to Pogacar’s account. The 24-year-old, who won the small Tre Valli Varesine and the Monument Lombardy Tour at the end of last season, seamlessly continued his winning streak in 2023. At a Spanish gravel race and the Vuelta a Andalucia, where Pogacar won three out of five stages as well as the general classification, he seemed to be able to play with the competition as he pleased.

“They both really flew”

Vingegaard did something similar when he recently started the season in Spain with O Gran Camino. The Dane won all three stages and consequently also the overall ranking – such a start to the season has not been achieved by a current Tour winner since Bernard Hinault in 1986. “The two have really flown so far this year,” says Frenchman Romain Bardet, sixth in the 2022 Tour. Now it’s over with the preliminary skirmish. “From now on,” Pogacar told Belgian portal Sporza, “there will only be tough, important races. I want to be really good at Paris-Nice, which I’ve never driven before.”

The Slovenian then wants to win a major spring classic for the first time this year and will be at the start at Milan-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders. Egan Bernal will still not be an equal competitor after his horror crash with life-threatening injuries over a year ago.

Team Ineos’ Colombian, who also won Paris-Nice in 2019 on his way to Tour victory, is still looking for his old form. The German Maximilian Schachmann, whose two surprising overall victories at the Promenade de Anglais in 2020 and 2021 were his greatest successes, is not among the winners this year.

Pogacar actually wanted to satisfy his hunger for victory this Saturday as the defending champion in the tough one-day Strade Bianche race – and then jet to the start of Paris-Nice with a private jet. But this one-two punch plan of a hardened man has been discarded. The highly talented prefers to practice with his teammates around his home in Monaco for the 32.2-kilometer team time trial.

Instead of taking the team’s time on the fourth rider to cross the finish line, as is usual, Paris-Nice is experimenting with a special format: the time of each individual pro is counted individually. As a result, Pogacar and Vingegaard will eventually break away from their spinning teammates and rush to the finish line alone at their own pace. As so often recently.