Jonas Vingegaard made things clear. Fifth in the general classification at the start of the fifth stage of Tirreno-Adriatrico, Friday March 8, the Dane won alone and snatched the blue jersey of leader of the Italian event from local Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek).
The rider from the Visma-Lease a bike team accelerated 5 km from the summit of San Giacomo (11.9 km at 6.2% average), the big difficulty of the day, while the finish line was 29 km away, leaving its main rivals on the sidelines.
The Spaniard Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates), 2eand the Australian Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe), 3e, will arrive 1 min 12 s later. It was the shortest of the seven stages of the Race to the Two Seas: 144 km between Torricella Sicura and Valle Castellana in Abruzzo.
Vingegaard now has 54 seconds overall over Ayuso. A comfortable lead, while the sixth and penultimate stage, Saturday, 180 km long, promises to be tough. It will take runners to the summit of Monte Petrano, in Marche, at an altitude of 1,088 m after more than ten kilometers of ascent at almost 8% on average and a difference in altitude of 817 m.
Winner of the last two editions of the Tour de France, the Dane has already won O Gran Camiño (Spain), at the end of February, with all the distinctive jerseys and three of the four stages contested.
McNulty leader in Paris-Nice
On the other side of the Alps, on Paris-Nice, two of his rivals announced for the 2024 edition of the Grande Boucle, the Slovenian Primoz Roglic (Bora-Hansgrohe) and the Belgian Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step) do not have not yet raised their arms or taken on the leader’s jersey overall.
Friday, it was the Dane Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) who won the sixth stage of the race to the sun, in La Colle-sur-Loup (Alpes-Maritimes), while the American Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates ) took back the yellow jersey.
The two men, accompanied by the American Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a bike), broke away in the last bump of the day. They crossed the line, in the rain, with around fifty seconds ahead of a small group of favorites, led by Remco Evenepoel (4e) and Primoz Roglic (9e).
The suspense for the final victory remains, before the last two stages in the Nice region, where difficult weather conditions are expected. The Colombian Santiago Buitrago, 2e overall at the start, lost all his chances with a fall and a mechanical incident in the final. The runner of Bahrain-Victorious (16e Friday) is now at 14e place 2 min 33 s from the yellow jersey