Paris-Nice: Mathieu Burgaudeau holds off bunch sprint to win stage 6

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Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotalEnergies) defied the odds to win stage 6 of Paris-Nice with a late attack, fending off the sprinters after a breathless finale in Aubagne.

Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) took the sprint for second ahead of Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma), but the fast men fell just short of overhauling Burgaudeau, who married strength and savvy with his winning move.

The Frenchman attacked on the uphill intermediate sprint in Lascours with a shade under 9km remaining and he persisted in his effort over the other side, steadying himself after he almost slid out on a corner.

Burgaudeau was facing a slight headwind on the flat run-in that followed, but he succeeded in stretching his lead out to 20 seconds over the peloton with 3.5km to go. That gap was reduced significantly by the time the 23-year-old passed beneath the flamme rouge, with Trek-Segafredo and Jumbo-Visma’s Christophe Laporte giving chase, but Burgaudeau showed remarkable resilience to stay clear.

The final obstacle was the slight rise in the finishing straight, but Burgaudeau kept his gear turning over to hang on for the first victory of his professional career, while Pedersen outsprinted Van Aert, Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert) and Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) for second place.

An exhausted Burgaudeau lay down on the roadside past the finishing line, but he was wearing a broad smile as he did so. The youngster had impressed throughout the week in his work on behalf of Pierre Latour, and he seized his own opportunity with his determined attack in Aubagne at the end of a stage that had long seemed destined to finish in a reduced bunch sprint.

“The legs were really good like they had been since the start of the season, but cycling isn’t just about the physical, you have to have the confidence and be sure in your head,” Burgaudeau said. “That’s what I was lacking in the last weeks and a lot of times in the past, but today I told myself to go and not look back. I was à bloc in the final kilometre and the one thing I told myself was not to look over the my shoulder before the finish.”

In the overall standings, Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) finished safely in the peloton to retain the yellow jersey with a lead of 39 seconds over Simon Yates (BikeExchange-Jayco) and 41 over Latour ahead of Saturday’s key summit finish on the Col de Turini, where the temperatures are expected to be scarcely above freezing.

“It’s the beginning of the season and every day here is hard racing,” Roglič said. “It was again today windy and super uncomfortable. At the end, it’s one [day] less. Tomorrow is a big one, with a big climb. Hopefully I have the legs to go with the best ones.”

How it unfolded

At the start in Courthézon, Roglič intimated that Paris-Nice’s longest stage would not be the site of a skirmish in the general classification, and so it proved. After being left isolated in the finale the previous afternoon, Roglič had yellow and black jerseys around him all day long, and not even the uphill intermediate sprint in the finale could entice the overall contenders onto the offensive.

At first glance, it appeared a stage for the baroudeurs, and a group of six riders – Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ), Julius van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost), Yevgeniy Federov (Astana-Qazaqstan), Victor Koretzky (B&B Hotels-KTM), Johan Jacobs (Movistar) and Sébastien Grignard (Lotto Soudal) – duly forged clear ahead of the opening ascent, the Col de Murs.

A headwind for much of the day, allied to the determination of Trek-Segafredo, Cofidis and Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert to tee up a bunch sprint, however, meant that the escapees were never granted much more than four minutes, and their gap began to come down rapidly ahead of the Col d’Espigoulier with 40km to go.

By then, Madouas had buttressed his king of the mountains advantage by leading over the Col de Murs, Col de Sambuc, Col des Portes and Col de Pas de la Couelle, but he was quickly dropped from the break when Jacobs and Koretzky accelerated at the base of the 10km-long Espigoulier.

Matthew Holmes (Lotto Soudal) attacked from the reduced peloton and bridged across to Jacobs and Koretzky midway up the climb, and that trio still led over the summit, though their advantage had shrunk to just 10 seconds thanks to the diligent pace-setting of Julien Bernard (Trek-Segafredo).

The break was caught with 27km to go and shortly afterwards, Søren Kragh Andersen (DSM) channelled Frédéric Vichot with a white knuckle descent, though the Dane was swept up as the road flattened out. The GC men opted not to contest the uphill intermediate sprint in Lascours on the run-in, and when Burgaudeau jumped away there, it looked like a cameo and nothing more. Instead, the Vendée native would finish as the day’s leading man.

“At the start I had to protect Pierrot [Latour], especially on the descent of the Espigoulier, but I felt really good all day, and I really wanted to have a go on the final climb,” Burgaudeau said. “I played my hand and it worked.”