Paris-Tours: Matteo Trentin fastest in breakaway sprint to claim hat-trick victory

Matteo Trentin (Tudor Pro Cycling) claimed his hat-trick third victory in the most unexpected way at the gravel-laden Paris-Tours on Sunday.

The Italian was part of a small chase group of five that surprisingly caught what appeared to be the winning breakaway, Paul Lapeira (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) and Thibaud Gruel (Groupama-FDJ), with 600 metres to the finish line.

The two leaders had split off the front of a reduced field in the final 30km and worked well together to maintain a fluctuating 30- to 15-second gap on the run-in to the final stretch of racing.

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An odd turn of events saw Lapeira and Gruel sit up and look to one another in the last kilometre, throwing away the race win in a game of cat-and-mouse.

Trentin's group caught the pair with 600 metres to go, and he was the fastest of the group, winning the race for a third time in his career, leaving Christophe Laporte (Visma-Lease a Bike) in second and Albert Withen Philipsen (Lidl-Trek) in third on the day.

Lapeira and Gruel ended up just off the podium in fourth and fifth, with Stefan Bissegger (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) taking sixth and Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) seventh in Tours.

Trentin won Paris-Tours in 2015 and 2017, and this victory marks his first since last year at the Tour de Wallonie.

"I won this race almost ten years ago. Finally, I can win a race this year. After the Tour de France, I was feeling really good, and my legs were where they should be. I was a bit unlucky and got injured, and had to wait a little to come back racing. Finally, I got it," Trentin said.

Trentin admitted that he was surprised they brought the breakaway back in such a short distance, but that years of racing experience told him that the unlikely scenario could happen if the two stopped to look at one another.

"They snuck away in a perfect moment when we were attacking and attacking, and it was the first and only moment of looking at each other when they went. We kept attacking and chasing, and in the end, we snuck away in five. Bissegger was a passenger, and so that wasn't really nice. We couldn't get closer than 10 seconds," he said.

"We knew that if we kept them there, there was sometimes the case where people start to look at each other, and if they did that, we would come back, and that is what happened in just a few hundred metres; at 1.5km to go they had 10 seconds, and in the last corner, we were there, and I won the sprint."

How it unfolded

The 119th edition of Paris-Tours Elite set the peloton off on a 211.6km race from Chartres to Tours in France. The pan-flat route included nine gravel sectors in the closing kilometres of the race into Tours.

The day marked the final race for Arnaud Démare, who has chosen to end his professional cycling career with Arkéa-B&B Hotels on French soil in a race he won in 2021 and 2022.

An early six-rider breakaway emerged that included Jordan Labrosse (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Johan Jacobs (Groupama-FDJ), Oliver Knight (Cofidis), Jonas Rutsch (Intermarché-Wanty), Hartthijs de Vries (Unibet Tietema Rockets), and Kenny Molly (Van Rysel Roubaix).

The six riders extended their lead to 2:30 by the halfway point of the race, as teams Lotto and Visma-Lease a Bike set a quick pace at the front of the peloton behind.

As the breakaway hit the gravel roads, Knight had already abandoned the race, while Labrosse suffered an untimely mechanical and was distanced from the leaders on the road.

The challenging off-road sectors littered the final 60km of the race, giving Visma-Lease a Bike and Tudor the motivation to bring the time gap down to a more manageable one minute. Ultimately, the efforts of the riders in the breakaway ended, and the reduced 45-rider peloton was back together with 50km remaining.

Cees Bol (XDS Astana) was the first to launch an attack, which was short-lived but led to a series of countermoves from teams Lidl-Trek and UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

Lapeira and Gruel managed to gain a slim lead with three dusty gravel sectors and 30km remaining.

Several riders suffered flat tires, including Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Arnaud De Lie (Lotto) and Tobias Lund Andresen (Picnic PostNL) and were caught back in the chasing group behind the main field.

The reduced field split apart as Laporte put the pressure on the front, but with little organisation in the chase, the gap to Lapeira and Gruel continued to increase into the final two gravel sectors.

Another lull over the tarmac allowed the main field to swell back up to about 45 riders while the two leaders worked well together, swapping pulls, in what began to look more and more like the winning breakaway.

Alessandro Covi (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Withen Philipsen accelerated over the penultimate gravel sector, causing more separations in the field.

Laporte counter-attacked and was quickly followed by Trentin, Bissegger, Vacek and Withen Philipsen, but the gap to the leaders was held at 15 seconds inside the last 15km - and held strong until the last kilometre.

The two leaders entered the final kilometre and looked to race hand, but an unusual change in tactics led them into a game of cat and mouse, and because of that, they were caught with 600 metres to go, with Trentin claiming the sprint victory in Tours.

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