On the bike, Jonas Vingegaard's start to the 2025 season at Paris-Nice may have been largely uneventful. Still, the Visma-Lease a Bike leader found himself in the news post-stage all the same after he criticised some of the roads used during Sunday's opening hilly leg.
"I don't think the route was very good today," Vingegaard told Feltet, "I don't think it was worthy of a WorldTour race. Bad roads, constantly right and left, potholes."
Vingegaard saved his strongest words for the final descent off a third-category climb, the Côte de Chanteloup-les-Vignes, which led to a short section of flatter road and then the technical finish.
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"We rode it three times, it wasn't good enough for a WorldTour race," the double Tour de France winner stated.
"It was stressful. Very stressful. I hope not all my race days will be like this this year. Then it won't be fun."
Feltet reported that it had approached ASO over Vingegaard's criticisms, but the organisation made no comment.
Although held up by crashes, but not losing time as they took place in the 3km-to-go safety zone, Vingegaard finished 54th in the results table in the same time as the main bunch.
As a result of the time bonuses on offer during the stage, on GC, he is lying 10 seconds behind stage winner Luke Lamperti (EF Education-EasyPost).
With his season start delayed following a training accident and illness, Vingegaard was almost equally expressive about the tension on a crash-filled stage 1 when he talked to Danish TV channel TV2 after the race.
"It was stressful, I would say. There was a lot of stress out there, and luckily, we made it through safely out there. There were a lot of crashes today.
"I just hope everyone is okay. It was my first race day this year, and I hope that all race days aren't all going to be like this, because then it would be terrible."
When TV2 suggested that his feelings of apprehension might be due to his lack of racing so far this year, Vingegaard responded good humouredly,
"Maybe I'm getting old, I don't know," he joked.
"However, I talked to some people out there, and they said that, fortunately, not all races have been like this. I hope the rest of the week won't be like that either.
Vingegaard is perhaps more mindful than in the Paris-Nice peloton about road conditions and crashes, given he was a DNS on stage 6 of Paris-Nice last year after falling on stage 5. Briefly race leader last year and running second overall when he abandoned, his best result to date overall was third in 2023 behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ United)
Like stage 1, stage 2 of Paris-Nice from Épône to Montargis also has three third-category climbs, but they are all early on. The usual echelons of the plains of northern France notwithstanding, the 187km day of racing is expected to end in a bunch sprint.
