Sunny Skies Great Riders at Paris-Nice Today

For the second time in five days, the Paris-Nice stage was won by Peter Sagan of Liquigas-Doimo. For a change of pace so far in this stage race, the riders raced the 157 kilometer course under sunny skies.

A welcome change for Canadians Christian Meir and Svein Tuft of Garmin-Transitions and Dominique Rollin of Cervelo Test Team. This warm weather also brought with it a high pace which resulted in some tired legs for some of the top riders. The three Canadians all rode well, with solid finishes on the day: Meier was 80th on the stage and sits in 87th in the general classification, Rollin was 148th on the stage and sits in 122 in the general classification, and Tuft was 153th on the stage and sits in 136 in the general classification.

Tuft took the time after the stage to share his thoughts on the day, “Today was actually pretty nice compared to the last few days. We had sun and temperatures as high as 10 degrees. No snow or minus temperatures so I was pretty happy about that. The race was a difficult one. Lots of climbing and right from the gun the race was on like I’ve never seen it before. The race split in two about 25 kilometers in and I was in the latter half of the pack. Christian was up front and had a good ride today. Tomorrow is a long hilly 220 kilometers so we’re expecting another epic day.”

Meier reiterated Tuft’s thoughts on the race, emphasizing how challenging Saturday’s stage will be, “today the sun was shining and for the first time in quite awhile there were no leg warms and my arm warmers were quickly rolled down. The race was on from the start and never let off until the finish line. The day went well for us with David Millar again in the front but unfortunately for me there was a split in the field in the end and I got caught behind. Tomorrow will be a very hard day at 220 kilometers with tons of climbing and a hard category 1 climb towards the end, going to be a special day, haha.”