Visma-Lease a Bike powered to victory in the stage 3 team time trial in Paris-Nice, moving defending champion Matteo Jorgenson into the yellow jersey.
The Dutch team beat Jayco-AlUla by 14 seconds – runners up in this race's TTT for the second time in a row – whilst Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe finished third, 25 seconds down.
Visma executed their ride perfectly, bringing four riders into the final 2km and setting up Jorgenson and Jonas Vingegaard to cross the line together, taking time from all their rivals.
Jorgenson now leads the overall, and will wear the yellow jersey for the first time tomorrow, having only taken the lead on the final stage when he won Paris-Nice in 2024.
Former race leader Tim Merlier expectedly relinquished the jersey, with his Soudal-QuickStep teammates finishing 50 seconds down, as the Belgian rolled home at an easy pace after being dropped. He will instead wear the green jersey on stage 4.
Jonas Vingegaard moves into second overall, six seconds down on his teammate, whilst current third is Michael Matthews (Jayco-AlUla), 21 seconds down with his leader Ben O'Connor in fourth on the same time.
"Just proud of the boys," Jorgenson said at the finish. "I think we did the plan as well as we could, and I'm just happy with the commitment from everyone. I don't take it for granted having six guys next to me all committed to a plan. It feels good to have it behind us now."
Jorgenson revealed that the team had been working towards this particular stage since January team camp, training with specific riders and equipment, and that they had a clear plan starting the day.
"We wanted to use our two motorbikes, Per [Strand Hagenes] and Edo [Affini] to the best of our ability and have them do their turns before the steep climb at the end, and then the goal was to get four of us over the steep climb which we were able to – I'm proud of both Bart [Lemmen] and Victor [Campenaerts] for making it over that.
"Then from the top of the climb to the finish it was just about getting through the corners as fast as possible and taking the last kilometre with everything we had left."
"To be honest I think the execution today was as near perfect as it could be," was Vingegaard's assessment. "We just did the perfect team time trial today almost. We made no mistakes and we went so fast the whole day, everyone was so strong. All my teammates were incredible today."
How it unfolded
Second down the ramp, Jayco-AlUla set the first early time of 30:41, with Michael Matthews stopping the clock as he sprinted across the line ahead of Ben O'Connor, all other riders dispatched during the hard effort.
The way teams were sacrificing riders became most obvious on the climb, with several riders leading into the ascent and then pulling off to come almost to a halt – or a complete standstill in the case of Ivo Oliveira (UAE Emirates-XRG).
UAE's effort wasn't enough to trouble the top times, however, despite winning the TTT in the 2024 edition.
Lidl-Trek almost took two riders to the line, but a sketchy final corner for Mads Pedersen saw Mattias Skjelmose sprinting alone to stop the clock and conserve as much GC time as possible.
It was Visma-Lease A Bike who then knocked Jayco-AlUla off the top spot, going 14 seconds faster than the Australians as co-leaders Jorgenson and Vingegaard finished off a big team effort.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe managed to take three riders to the finish, but still finished 25 seconds shy of the impressive time set by the Dutch squad.
Ultimately, no other team could get any closer than Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, and as final starters Soudal-QuickStep stopped the clock 50 seconds down, victory for the Dutch squad was confirmed.
Visma's two leaders were naturally the big GC winners of the day, but strong rides from Jayco AlUla and Red Bull also saw their respective leaders Ben O'Connor and Aleksandr Vlasov limit their losses in the overall. Lidl-Trek's Mattias Skjlemose also remains within touching distance of the race lead, despite having to finish the TTT alone.
Those whose GC ambitions took a dent on Tuesday include Lenny Martinez and Santiago Buitrago for Bahrain Victorious who are now just over a minute down, along with Harold Tejada (XDS-Astana), Steff Cras (TotalEnergies) and Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling)
That said, there were not any huge disasters, with most team leaders finishing in their team's first group, and most of the big names still within touching distance of the race with tougher tests and climbing to come.
Matilda Price is an NCTJ-qualified journalist based in the UK who joined Cyclingnews in March 2025. Prior to that, she worked at the Racing News Editor at GCN, and extensively as a freelancer contributing to Cyclingnews, Cycling Weekly, Velo, Rouleur, Escape Collective, Red Bull and more. She has reported from many of the biggest events on the calendar, including the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France Femmes, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. She has particular experience and expertise in women's cycling, and women's sport in general. She is a graduate of modern languages and sports journalism.
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