Bouhani Wins Paris-Nice First Stage

Last updated : 04 March 2013 By Covsupport News Service

French national road race champion Nacer Bouhani took the yellow jersey and the victory on the first stage of the Paris-Nice race this afternoon.

Europcar's Damien Gaudin was wearing the leaders yellow jersey as the race start off on a 195km stage from Saint-Germain-en-Laye to Nemours.

On a perfect day where there was no wind, Romain Sicard (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Bertjan Lindeman (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Yannick Talabardon (Sojasun) got away.

Lindeman made sure he was in the polka dot jersey tomorrow, when he took the four points for the third category climb of the day.

As crashes started to occur and the likes of Rui Costa was forced out of the race with a damaged wrist, their lead was still over four minutes.

Having taken the first sprint, Lindeman took the second at La-Madeleine-sur-Loing, after 162kms

Europcar working for Gaudin, lead the peloton and ten kilometres up the road, they caught the escapers.  

A third of the peloton including Jonathan Tiernan-Locke took to the front. some forty seconds of a group containing Tom Boonen.

Inside the final ten kilometres and on single track roads, teams did their turn at the front.

With a straight run, it was going to be a bunch sprint and it was no surprise that it would be this front group, which had shed a number of riders, were contesting it.

Nacer Bouhani was brought up to the front and he got down the right and then moved over to take the win in a time of 4.47.23 ahead of Lampre's Allessandro Pettachi and Ellia Viviani.   

Nicholas Roche finished 59th, Jonathan Tiernan-Locked finished 166th David Millar finished 167th.

Due to the bonification points for winning the stage of ten seconds, Bouhani takes over the leaders jersey by hundredths of a second for Tuesday's 200km stage from Vimory - Cérilly.