Paris-Nice 2025 Stage 4

March 12, 2025 Yesterday's Team Time Trial split up the GC riders on time but today's first difficult road stage could turn things over again. Starting in Vichy, the capital of the French rump state in 1940 after the German occupation, the riders head South East across six categorized climbs totaling 2,700M of elevation gain over the 163KM stage. The day finishes at the top of the last climb of La Loge des Gardes, a 6.7KM climb that averages 7%. It was cold at the start, just 7C (45F) and with rain expected during the day, it would be a difficult stage. Eight riders made the break including Thibault Guernalec of Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Andreas Leknessund of Uno-X Mobility, Sylvain Moniquet of Cofidis, Thomas Gachignard of TotalEnergies, Edward Planckaert of Alpecin-Deceuninck, Vincenzo Albanese of EF-Education EasyPost, Dion Smith of Intermarché-Wanty, and Ben Swift of Ineos . They had 3 minutes on a Visma-Lease a Bike led peloton with 60KM to go. A few kilometers later on a downhill heading towards Le Breuil, Santiago Buitrago of Bahrain Victorious, one of the GC favorites for the week, crashed hard on a right turn when trying to get back the peloton after a wheel change and had to abandon as a result. With 53KM to go on the Côte du Canon, Josh Tarling and Tobias Foss of Ineos went on the attack. They were 40 seconds ahead of the peloton but, with 46KM to go, hail stones and heavy rain were coming down and the race organization made the call to temporarily neutralize the race. There was a lot of confusion among the riders about how, when, and where the race would resume. Multiple accidents with race vehicles added to the confusion. A gendarme motor bike crashed on the descent and a Decathlon AG2R team car hit something which smashed in their front bumper. The riders were escorted all the way to 29KM to go where they were staged to restart. After some time, the original break were let go, then Tarling and Foss 1 minute 37 seconds later and finally the peloton at 2 minutes 20 seconds. A lot of riders struggled when the race got going again. Leknessund dropped the rest of his breakaway companions and Lidl-Trek put on such a pace in the peloton that riders were getting dropped on relatively flat roads. Leknessund was caught near the base of the penultimate climb of Côte de La Chabanne with 15KM to go by the rest of the breakaway. Their gap was coming down though, only 35 seconds to Tarling and Foss and 1 minute 10 seconds to the peloton. Tarling and Foss made it up to the break with 11KM to go but they only had 25 seconds on the bunch who were really moving. Foss went solo with 6KM to go near the start of La Loge des Gardes but he was kept at 30 seconds. Florian Lipowitz of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe was first to make a move on La Loge des Gardes, 4KM from the finish. It reduced the group to around 20 riders but the elastic did not snap. Lenny Martinez of Bahrain Victorious attacked with 2.5KM to go and was covered by Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike. Vingegaard countered once but Martinez responded. He countered again which was too much for Martinez. Foss was caught in this flurry, leaving Vingegaard alone at the front of the race. João Almeida of UAE-XRG took a hard pull under 1KM to go which closed the gap down to under 10 seconds and split the group to six riders. Almeida made one last effort with 300M to go. He caught Vingegaard 75M from the line and continued his push forward to take the victory. Vingegaard finished second with a 1 second gap and third went to Mattias Skjelmose of Lidl-Trek, 2 seconds behind Almeida. Vingegaard takes over the race lead, now ahead by 5 seconds to his teammate Matteo Jorgenson and 33 seconds to Skjelmose. Almeida jumped 13 positions in GC to fifth at 37 seconds.