'A good rehearsal for the Tour' – Paris-Nice team time trial to put teams through paces ahead of Tour de France TTT opener in Barcelona

Paris-Nice director general Yannick Talabardon believes that most teams taking part in the stage 3 team time trial will make the most of it as a useful early rehearsal for the Tour de France's opening stage in July.

Stage 3's team time trial of 23.5 from Cosne-Cours-sur Loire and Pouilly-sur-Loire this Tuesday is just four kilometres longer than the 19-kilometre stage 1 TTT of the Tour in Barcelona, set to run almost entirely through the Catalan capital on the afternoon of Saturday, July 4.

The positioning of the TTT so early in Paris-Nice also reinforces the similarities between the two. While this is the fourth straight year that the Race to the Sun will have a TTT, this summer's Tour will be the first time the race has opened with a collective race against the clock since 1971. Paris-Nice director Yannick Talabardon confirmed to L'Équipe the decision to include the comparatively rare speciality in the 2026 edition of the race he organisers was anything but coincidental.

"We knew that the 2026 Tour had a TTT and the idea was to have one too," Talabardon said.

"Our internal regulations mean we have to have it in the first third of the route and it's almost our top priority, to find good roads which are most suitable for a team time trial."

Both the Tour de France and Paris-Nice have ASO as their parent organiser, and the two stages will have an identical format, too, with times being taken on the first rider across the line. This has been the case at Paris-Nice in the past couple of years but will be the first time the format will have been used at the Tour de France.

The Paris-Nice course itself is not as demanding as the finale of the Tour de France's equivalent TTT, which, if four kilometres shorter, ends with a double ascent on different approaches through Barcelona's Montjuic Park. Rather, this March's TTT will be over rolling terrain.

"I would have liked it to be more similar to the one in the Tour, but even if the elevation gain is the same, it's more spread out," Talabardon told L'Équipe. "Even so, it'll be a good test for the teams in regard to the Tour."

Talabardon added that in the early years of the Paris-Nice TTT, teams were not so enthusiastic about its inclusion, but given the team time trial in the Tour, "they're very pleased to have a rehearsal at Paris-Nice and there will be another at the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes" – the race formerly known as the Critérium du Dauphiné.

"We can sense the teams' interest and motivation. Usually Ineos Grenadiers have a very similar team to the Tour and Visma-Lease a Bike as well because Jonas Vingegaard, Bruno Armirail and Victor Campenaerts should all be there."

"These are good opportunities to work on internal protocols and processes and then reinforce them in training."

According to the Ouest-France. newspaper, Ineos Grenadiers, Decathlon CMA CGM and Groupama-FDJ United have been holding special TTT training sessions on motor racing circuits to put the riders through their paces in the speciality.

Armirail, whose Visma-Lease a Bike team won the Paris-Nice TTT last year, said: "It's a good test before the Tour. More and more teams use Paris-Nice for that. I've seen UAE were doing a recon of the TTT course here, and Ineos were running through their paces at a motor racing circuit near Valencia back in January.

"Those tests show up everything that can be done inside a team, the work needed to be done on material and kit and that's why it [the Paris-Nice TTT] increasingly becomes an objective."

The first team to start this afternoon's TTT will be Picnic PostNL at 1510 CET, with squads starting at four-minute intervals. Then after stage 3's first set-piece key GC day, there's no rest for the Paris-Nice overall contenders as stage 4 ends with the 2026 race's first summit finish, a Category 1 ascent to Uchon.