Primoz Roglic (Jumbo Visma) has crashed twice on the
closing stage of Paris-Nice and was forced into a lone chase to try and retain
his race lead.
Roglic had a crash earlier in the stage then crashed
again after needing a new bike due to a mechanical.
And while some of his team had been with him aiding him in the chase after the second crash, he burned them all off and had chase back alone; helped by some of the riders who were coming out the back.
Despite his crash, Bora-hansgrohe, Cofidis, Astana and Ineos Grenadiers were driving hard on the front inside the final 20km.
Inside the last 10km, while descending, Roglic almost crashed for a third time but managed to stay upright.
Roglic's second crash, and the one that saw him caught off the back and chasing hard to defend his lead - though losing it - was not recorded by the TV cameras. It means at the time of writing it was not clear exactly when or how he crashed.
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The stage came down to a sprint from a large front group, won by Magnus Cort (EF Education-Nippo). While Roglic kept riding hard all the way to the line, he finished just over three minutes down on the front group, containing his general classification rivals.
The drama-filled stage meant last year's Paris-Nice winner Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) retains his title as he finished in the front group. The German had been 2nd overall this morning, some 52 seconds down on Roglic, and moved into final yellow because of Roglic's time loss.
The only Irish rider in the race, double stage winner Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep), had another very strong ride on hilly terrain today after his breakaway exploits of yesterday.
He finished in 38th place on the stage and was only 1:39 down on the lead group; a very strong sign at the end of such a hard race and with just one week to go to Milan-Sanremo. Bennett was also 2nd in the points classification, with Roglic winning that competition.
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