Paris-Nice: Gallopin wins stage 6 and takes race lead

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Tony Gallopin soloed to victory Saturday during stage 6 of Paris-Nice and took over the race lead heading into Sunday's final time trial.

The Lotto Soudal rider slipped away from the yellow jersey group of Michal Kwiatkowski (Etixx-QuickStep) with about 30 kilometres remaining, and forged his way through the rain to the finish line in Nice. Simon Spilak (Team Katusha) finished second, followed by Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida) in third.

The Frenchman now leads stage 4 winner Richie Porte (Team Sky) by 36 seconds, while Kwiatkowski slipped to third place, 37 seconds down.

“It was difficult with the rain, it was a really hard day,” Gallopin said. “It was such a difficult stage and to win the race will still be really hard, and I hope that I can recover from this tough stage to do that. The time trial is not my best discipline, so we’ll have to see. Tomorrow I’m going to give my best to win the race.”

Gallopin hung with Kwiatkowski and two of the race leader’s Etixx-QuickStep teammates, as they separated from a select group that was chasing the remnants of a large early breakaway on the descent off the day’s penultimate climb.

He sat in until his group of four caught the lead group, which contained his teammate Tim Wellens. Gallopin took advantage of tactics between Kwiatkowski and Porte, who had started the day just one second behind on GC and who now had latched back onto the leaders.

He attacked the group and took a three second bonus at the final intermediate sprint to go along with his 40 second advantage to make his the leader on the road. As Porte crashed behind and Kwiatkowski faltered, Gallopin stormed into Nice for the stage win and overall lead.

As it happened

Rain and cold weather waited for the peloton not long after the start of stage 6, which took riders over 180.5km from Vence to Nice. The route included six categorised climbs and two intermediate sprints, the last of which came just 15km from the finish.

A breakaway group of 31 riders peeled away from the bunch early in the stage and built a gap of nearly three minutes over the second climb of the day. Most of the major teams except Etixx-QuickStep and Sky were represented in the large group, including Gallopin’s teammate, Wellens, who was the virtual leader on the road for much of the stage.

Thomas de Gendt (Lotto Soudal) also made the breakaway for the third consecutive and solidified his lead in the mountains classification.

The Col Saint Roch took a tool on the breakaway as riders started to drop from the lead group. Kwiatkowski and Etixx also hit out on the penultimate climb and put Sky under pressure on the descent. As the lead group rode to the Cote de Peille, the final climb of the day, Gallopin boldly jumped away and made his winning move. Kwiatkowski was unable to follow, while Porte eventually caught back up to the yellow jersey group near the top of the final ascent.

Porte quickly attacked after regaining contact, and he, too, gained a gap on the race leader, bringing along Spilak, Jakob Fugslan (Astana) and several others. A crash knocked Porte from the first chase group, but he remounted in time to finish two seconds ahead of Kwiatkowski and overtake the world champion in the overall standings.

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