Niermann and Scholz reflect on "Race to the Snow"

"Bang Bang, I hit the ground... When you start a race with this song running through your head, it's probably a bad omen. It worked out that way for me in the 'race to the snow' (but isn't Paris-Nice actually called the race to the sun?)" wrote Grischa Niermann on his website, www.grischa-niermann.de. "My somersault with two twists and a little wobble at the end actually came out well for me. But not for my brand-new Colnago C-Extreme, which is now to be trashed."

After stage one's rain and cold temperatures, stage two was slightly warmer and dryer, "but when you looked left and right from the road, you would have been better off with a pair of cross-country skis."

Finally, Niermann says, he hopes that he will appear in the European TV coverage of the race at some point this week, "because my son Finn always sits in front of the TV and calls out, 'my papa, my papa!' when he sees a Rabobank jersey."

Gerolsteiner's Ronny Scholz also has his doubts about the name of the race, as he wrote on www.ronnyscholz.de. "That this is 'the race to the sun', is hardly noticeable. It's just not getting warmer." And in trying to stay warm, he learned a lesson - the hard way. "Since I froze yesterday, I rubbed myself with a warming salve. Unfortunately I overdid it and did my feet, too. I regretted that very quickly. I felt as if someone had cut my feet off."