Paris-Nice stage 4 winner João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) has rejected a widespread idea amongst his fellow riders that after bad weather had caused the competition to be neutralised during a short period before the finish, the day's racing should have been cancelled entirely .
Amongst those opposing the continuation of stage 4, as finally happened, was new race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike). The Dane took second place at the Loge des Gardes summit behind Almeida. 'Everyone was freezing, nobody could feel their brakes," he said later.
The stage was brought to a halt by race officials due to snow, hail and heavy rain then the breakaway and peloton were guided slowly under neutralised conditions until 28.8km to go, where racing resumed.
But despite admitting afterwards he was no fan of racing in cold weather, and saying jokingly that "you shouldn't ask the winner that", Almeida also insisted that he was pleased the stage had continued.
"The worst was over, there was no safety risk, we even slowed down on the descent, so there was no reason to stop," Almeida said, according to L'Équipe.
"Cycling is not a sport for softies, sometimes you have to be tough."
Thierry Gouvenou, the member of the race organisation with special responsibility for safety and who played a key role in overseeing the neutralisation and subsequent restart, remained convinced that the right decision had been taken, too.
"We quickly realised the stage needed to be neutralised, the new UCI protocol says that in cases of race safety, bad weather, it's a decision for the jury and the organiser," Gouvenou told L'Équipe. "So we stopped the break, the counter-attack and the bunch."
Riding through a relatively remote, rural part of France at some distance from the closest big cities of Lyon and Clermont Ferrand made logistics tougher and "We wanted to bring the race to lower altitudes as quickly as possible rather than just leave the riders exposed to extreme conditions in the middle of that."
"Lots of them wanted to stop, but stopping would have got nowhere – there were no buses or places for them to take shelter."
Het Laatste Nieuws also reported that Gouvenou had claimed there were a welter of different points of view overall for him to handle, and that "143 riders [equals] 143 different opinions, of course. The fact is, we have had other editions of Paris-Nice in which riders rode in 10 centimetres of snow, conditions that were a long way off what we had now. The weather improved."
Gouvenou added that when officials met with the riders' representatives, Oliver Naesen (Decathlon AGR La Mondiale) and Matteo Trentin (Tudor Pro Cycling), there had been an agreement to continue the race.
However, Naesen had a notably different recollection of events, telling L'Équipe that he had not had time either to discuss the proposal with Trentin before the decision to continue was taken, and that when he got to front of the race "the first thing I heard was 'the break's back racing, we're starting again in two minutes!'
"That was it. For me the race was 'falsified'. Things can't happen like that. We have to have a warning, be told what's happening and then make the decision."
Previous race leader Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) had a similar complaint, saying he didn't know if the peloton was racing or neuralised after the restart.
Naesen agreed in any case that it had been the right decision to neutralise the stage.
"There was no alternative. If the police motorbike drivers, who are the best drivers who exist, couldn't do that descent [where the weather was worst - Ed.] without falling off, what could a peloton of 150 riders do? It was just impossible to go down without an accident."
Meanwhile there are rising concerns that Saturday's toughest mountain stage of Paris-Nice to Auron could be badly affected by snowfall. Last year the extremely bad weather forced organisers to change an identical 149km stage route to the cat.1 ascent Auron, preceded by the cat. 1 Col de la Colmiane.
Last March the first 89 kilometres of stage 7 remained the same, but it then finished on the Madone d'Utelle, a 15.3-kilometre ascent averaging 5.7%. As yet, though, ASO have not commented on any possible route switch for 2025's equivalent stage.
