AG2R's Carlos Betancur takes a fourteen second lead into the final stage of the 72nd Paris-Nice race after Garmin Sharp's Tom Jelte Slagter won the seventh stage.
Carlos Betancur of AG2R had taken the lead of this race on stage six after a second successive stage victory and led the riders out on this penultimate 195.5km stage from Mougins to Biot Sophia Antipolis
Lieuwe Westra (Astana), Pim Ligthart (Lotto-Belisol) Laurent Didier (Trek Factory Racing), Sylvester Szmyd (Movistar), Albert Timmer (Giant-Shimano), Florian Guillou (Bretagne-Séché Environnement), Matthias Frank (IAM Cycling), Brice Feillu (Bretagne-Séché Environnement) and Cyril Lemoine (Cofidis), joined to form a chase group which came after Ligthart had won the first sprint of the day.
The Lotto-Belisol rider also was first over the Col de Vence climb to move within a point of Sylvain Chavanel in the King Of The Mountains competition, as the group maintained a lead of 5.05 over the peloton with 61kms gone.
Lighthart went to take all of the thirty two points on offer before the peloton went past the leading group going into the final forty kilometres.
Attacks came from all the peloton with groups of riders forming but none were able to gain any time margin between themselves and the peloton.
With 4.8kms to go, Geraint Thomas of Team Sky, who was eight seconds down on Betancur, had his chances of taking something from the stage which would have given him a chance of snatching overall victory on the final stage ended when he crashed with 4.8kms to go.
Thomas was ok and he got on his bike but his race was over. Jacob Fuglslang of Astana attacked with 3.5kms and then let AG2R take over on the front.
Giant Shimano's Dries Devenyns led under the flam rouge. Rui Costa caught up to Betancur but Vincenzo Nibali went ahead followed by Tom Jelte Slagter.
BMC got a man up to Slagter as Kelderman lead out the sprint. On the right was Tom Jelte Slagter and he was first over the line, punching the air in delight, to take the stage win in a time of 5.00.35 at an average speed of 39.1km/h, ahead of World Champion Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida) and Carlos Betancur (AG2R), who leads going into the final stage..