Paris-Nice stage 2 LIVE: Breakaway formed on stage expected to be one for the sprinters
It's a day for the sprinters on a 187km stage from Epône to Montargis
Paris-Nice 2026 – Everything you need to know
Race Situation
Two riders in the day's break:
Casper Pedersen (Soudal Quick-Step)
Mathis Le Berre TotalEnergies)
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Unperturbed by yesterday, when Biniam Girmay was only able to sprint for fifth place, NSN are once again taking the responsibility to ride at the front of the peloton.
Over at Tirreno-Adriatico, race favourite Isaac del Toro has just finished his ride in the opening stage time trial. You can follow us for all the action here.
While things remain quiet here for now, have a read of the big news today that the Ineos Grenadiers team are set for a major budget boost having secured a new title sponsor.
The three riders at the front, that has now become two.
It seems that that's job done for Vercher. He's sat up and waiting for the peloton to collect him.
Here are the updated classifications:
Here are the KOM rankings as things stand. Pedersen was comfortably the strongest yesterday, but Le Berre kept himself in contention, and today has his teammate Vercher to try to help him work over the man in the polka-dot jersey.
Said climb is the Côte des Mesnuls, a 1.2km effort averaging 5.5%. Its greatest significance will be staging a resumption of the rivalry between Pedersen and Le Berre in the break, as they fight it out for KOM points.
And here are the three remaining riders, Pedersen, Le Berre and Vercher.
Here were the four riders together before Sütterlin dropped back.
At some point, Sütterlin must have thought better of taking part in the day’s break and determined it wasn’t worth the effort.
Despite having attacked earlier, Jasha Sütterlin is not actually in the break. He's back in the peloton, leaving just the three riders up the road.
Pleasant skies and nice conditions greet the riders today, further swinging the advantage towards the sprinters.
That said, yesterday the break came far closer than expected to surviving to the finish, so we can’t rule them out. And that’s a pretty strong quartet, with two of the men who did so well to hold off the peloton for so long yesterday.
That was an especially complicated process. The unlikelyhood of the break succeeding on such a flat stage is reflected in how little interest there was among the riders in the peloton to get into the break.
Sütterlin does indeed sit up and wait for Pedersen, Le Berre and Vercher to join him, and the four are 1:45 ahead of the peloton. We have our break of the day.
The three chasers still have a few seconds to make up on Sütterlin, but it looks like these four riders will form the break of the day.
The peloton seems to have sat up - they're already over a minute behind.
Two of the riders who were in the break yesterday, Casper Pedersen (Soudal Quick-Step) and Mathis Le Berre TotalEnergies), are chasing, along with Le Berre's teammate Matteo Vercher.
Jasha Sütterlin is the Jayco rider at the front, and he leads the race by a few seconds ahead of three chasers.
The riders at the unofficial start.
A Jayco rider is the first to make a move, and another rider is trying to join him.
Paris-Nice isn’t the only World Tour racing taking place today - over in Italy Tirreno-Adriatico has gotton under way. We’ve got live coverage of that race, too.
The riders are gliding through Achères for the unofficial start, and will be racing after about 3.km.
For a reminder of what happened yesterday, here's our race report.
Yesterday's stage winner and race leader Luke Lamperti, who will wear the yellow jersey today.
Of course, cycling is rarely as straightforward as it seems on paper, and one factor that could have made this a very different day is strong weather. But conditions appear mild, with the temperature warm and the wind gentle.
In total, there are three categorised climbs today, none of them longer than 1.2km and one of them steeper than 6.6%. The last one is completed with over 70km left of flat roads to ride, which should make this easy to control for the sprinter teams.
Whereas yesterday’s finale was made complicated by a series of hills, today is a much more straightforward sprinter stage - the most straightforward of this year’s Paris-Nice, in fact.
Hello and welcome to stage of two of Paris-Nice!
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