After a long, dismal slog through torrential downpour, hailstorms, sleet, and snow, avoiding the crashes and misfortune that took out many of his rivals, Matteo Jorgenson emerged into the sunshine on the Cote d’Azur on Sunday to be crowned the winner of Paris-Nice.
The American, who lives and trains in Nice, joined an elite club of just ten men to complete a successful title defence at the storied ‘Race to the Sun’, and did so with the biggest winning margin this century – over a minute. Plenty of those – Merckx, Anquetil, Poulidor – have gone on to win cycling’s biggest prizes. As the dust settles on a chaotic week of tune-up racing, one of the big conclusions to draw from his emphatic march to Nice has to be that Jorgenson is a Grand Tour contender.
