photo credits @ Paris-Nice
Olav Kooij sprinted to victory in stage 5 of the Paris-Nice today, his second victory in this year’s race.
The Visma-Lease rider crossed the line after a bunch sprint ahead of Mads Pedersen, while Pascal Ackermann finished third after the hilly 193.5km route from Saint-Sauveur-de-Montagut to Sisteron.
Sam Bennett (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) and Danny van Poppel (Bora-Hansgrohe) rounded out the top five on a day that saw a notable number of sprint contenders – including Arvid De Kleijn (Tudor Pro Cycling), Fabio Jakobsen (dsm-firmenich-PostNL), and Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) – left the race.
Meanwhile, Lucas Plapp of Jayco-Alula holds the overall leader’s yellow jersey in the ‘Race to the Sun’ with a 13-second advantage on Colombia’s Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain) with three stages to go.
Race Highlights
A breakaway group containing three Lotto Dsnty riders (Victor Campernaerts, Pascal Eenkhoorn and Mathias Paaschens), two from TotalEnergies (Pierre Latour and Sandy Dujardin), along with Dries De Bondt (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Matthias Norsgaard (Movistar) and Alexis Gougeard (Cofidis) seemed likely to stay away for the duration. However, the group was eventually reined in with around 10km to go.
Plapp briefly looked like he was out of position inside the final 10km, especially as the road rose and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) accelerated, but there was no change overall.
It was a messy final sprint, Kooij waited until the final 150m to execute his winning move, making his way up the left side of the road to not get boxed in, and seizing the stage honor on the line.
“It was quite a tough day, with the headwind it was very difficult to control a strong breakaway, especially after two guys more raced across,” the winner said post-stage. “We had to work for it all day. In the final, most teams didn’t have many guys left to control it, I just had to find my way. Luckily, I was able to open up.
“We committed to it with the whole team, had a great plan, so really happy that I could take my second win. It has been a good week and a huge success. We have some other goals with Matteo [Jorgenson] and Wilco [Kelderman] for the weekend, so we’re not done yet.”
Pedersen has moved into the green jersey and will try and get more than second on possibly his last chance of the race on Friday’s stage six, a lumpy 199km stage from Sisteron to La Colle-sur-Loup.
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