Paris-Nice

Tejano said:

How many former Tour de France winners preceded their first Tour win by winning Paris-Nice?

Anybody know?

Same year or any previous year?

Tejano said:

How many former Tour de France winners preceded their first Tour win by winning Paris-Nice?

Anybody know?

Contador, Indurain, Roche, Zoetemelk, Merckx, Jan Janssen, Anquetil.

Landis doesn't count, his Tour win was taken off him.

classic1 said:

Contador, Indurain, Roche, Zoetemelk, Merckx, Jan Janssen, Anquetil.

Landis doesn't count, his Tour win was taken off him.

Thanks!

I remember someone saying that Paris-Nice was a good measure of a riders future ability to be successful in Grand Tours. Just interested in specific riders who did win Paris-Nice before taking their first Tour.

There are some big names on that list.

The famous and terrific Poulidor, who never won TDF but was ever a great contender, won Paris-Nice in 72( beating the unknown Merckx) and 73 !😄

classic1 said:

Contador, Indurain, Roche, Zoetemelk, Merckx, Jan Janssen, Anquetil.

And Louison Bobet (and Roger Lapébie 1937).

Among the french riders, the Critérium International was probably the best predictor of later greatness.

poulidor said:

The famous and terrific Poulidor, who never won TDF but was ever a great contender, won Paris-Nice in 72( beating the unknown Merckx) and 73 !😄

Unknown? He'd won something like 11 monuments, 2 Giros and 3 Tours de France by that time.

Our own Sean Kelly won 7 consecutive P-N races!
And the year, that kelly didn't win P-N, Stephen Roche won it!

Always liked P-N as a race.
Racing from cold Northern France to relative warm Cote D'Azur always makes for interesting racing.

Any indications on the field for P-N 2009?

Not sure what the field will be like although there will be some top names in there. Have seen the route though (it's up on the paris-nice website) and it looks great. Opening TT is longer than usual at 9.3km, and there's a mountain top finish.

Stage 4 to St-Etiene has a series of climbs close to the finish (small ones though).
Stage 5 is a good stage for breakaways.
Stage 6 finishes with a 13.8km at 6.6% climb. Not as hard as Ventoux (!) but still pretty tough.
Stage 7 Has a lot of small climbs, one cat 1 and then the last two kilometres are uphill at just over 5%.
Stage 8 is the normal affair with three climbs and a downhill finish.

Route is challenging enough to create interesting racing without one stage being totally decisive.

limerickman said:

Our own Sean Kelly won 7 consecutive P-N races!
Any indications on the field for P-N 2009?

startlist.cyclingfever.comstartlist.htmlOpen ↗

classic1 said:

Contador, Indurain, Roche, Zoetemelk, Merckx, Jan Janssen, Anquetil.

Landis doesn't count, his Tour win was taken off him.

Excluding Contador what I find interesting is that 3 of the names on the list won only 1 Tour and the other 3 names won at least 5 each.

If you look from WWII onward there were 22 riders who won only one Tour and 5 riders who won at least five Tours.

So 3 of 22 one-time riders took a P-N before winning their first Tour and

3 of 5 five-time or more riders took a P-N before winning their first Tour.

startlist (provisoire)startlist.cyclingfever.comstartlist.htmlOpen ↗

classic1 said:

Contador, Indurain, Roche, Zoetemelk, Merckx, Jan Janssen, Anquetil.

Landis doesn't count, his Tour win was taken off him.

eeww

Three days to go!

Any bets for the prologue winner? I think this is a hard one since there's no clear favourite IMO so I'll go with Christian Vandevelde OR the australian Mark Renshaw from Team Columbia, who did well in the ToC prologue.

The route is pretty flat and with just a bit over 9km it won't give too much a benefit for the pure timetrialists.