Tadej Pogacar blitzes field with dominant win to take Paris-Nice title from David Gaudu and Jonas Vingegaard
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Updated 12/03/2023 at 16:30 GMT
So far in 2023, Tadej Pogacar has been unstoppable as he cruised to victory on the final stage of Paris-Nice, making it a hat-trick of stage wins to secure the overall title. Pogacar was making his Paris-Nice debut and continued his remarkable form in the early part of the season by taking a solo victory after launching a devastating attack on the final climb in Nice.
'Dominant from start to finish' - Perfect Pogacar seals Paris-Nice win with stage 8 victory
Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) took a dominant victory on the final stage of Paris-Nice to win the title for the first time in his career, as he underlined his status as the rider to beat in men’s cycling.
It was Pogacar’s third stage win in a row as he won Paris-Nice at the first time of asking, having opted to compete in Tirreno-Adriatico in recent years.
He took the stage victory by 33 seconds from Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) and David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), and was 53 seconds ahead of the latter in the final overall standings.
“I always feel I’m good in the first races,” said Pogacar following victory on Stage 8. “It was always my dream to win Paris-Nice. The fact I did it is incredible.
“They say attack is the best defence. I really know these roads. I’ve done a lot of training here. I knew exactly how my legs were on the final climb and how much [energy] I could spend to get to the top.
“I had good maths today, I calculated it great! If I don’t win anything until the end of the season it’s still not bad so I can be more relaxed.”
Pogacar carried a 12-second advantage over Gaudu and 58 seconds to Vingegaard coming into the day but added two seconds to his lead when he came third at the intermediate sprint.
Uno-X pair Jonas Gregaard and Alexander Kristoff were in the breakaway, with the former wanting to win the King of the Mountains classification.
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Paris-Nice Stage 8 highlights as terrific Tadej Pogacar roars to first title
He was first over the Cote de Levens and Cote de Chateauneuf, so secured the polka-dot jersey in the middle of the stage.
Fourteen other riders had now joined Gregaard in the breakaway, including Stefan Kung (Groupama FDJ), Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious), Ion Izagirre (Cofidis) and Oliver Naesen (Ag2R-Citroen) but they couldn’t build a gap of more than two minutes.
There was a scary moment when a public car appeared from nowhere on the descent towards the Cote de Peille, but everyone appeared to come away unscathed.
UAE Team Emirates were working hard on the front for Pogacar as Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious) launched a second attack of the day, went past the breakaway and was in the lead by himself with 50km remaining.
Poels was caught by the diminished bunch, which had around 16 riders left, with 25 km to go as just the Col d'Eze was left to tackle in terms of the climbs.
Pogacar went for it with around 4km from the top of the climb and simply rode away from everyone else.
Gaudu tried his best to chase the Slovenian, but fell back into the chasing group who were 52 seconds behind with 10km to go, most of which was descending.
Whilst Pogacar cruised to victory, Vingegaard took second place from Gaudu on the line but nobody could get close to the two-time Tour de France champion.
Next for Pogacar is Milan-San Remo next Saturday, which will be live on Eurosport and discovery+.
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