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It's been a week to forget at Paris-Nice for Jonas Vingegaard, as the cold and wet weather likely had the peloton dreaming of indoor Zwift sessions and has really fortified the meaning of the race to the sun, as the riders desperately try to pull the south of France closer to them with every pedal stroke.
Elsewhere, David Gaudu is in hot water, there's a photo from Tirreno-Adriatico that needs close analysis, and we have our regular Jim Ratcliffe update with even more Ineos news already in the pipeline for Monday too.
Oh, and a warning that the pixelated photo of Victor Campenaerts is unpixelated below. There's nothing inherently wrong with the human form, of course, but just in case you're mid-meal or reading this on a massive iPad round your grandma's house.
Paris-not-so-Nice 🥶
It's been a torrid week at Paris-Nice (and at Tirreno-Adriatico, but wake us up when something happens there, hopefully today is the day).
Stage 4 was briefly neutralised due to the torrential rain and freezing weather, with Jonas Vingegaard not happy the racing continued to the stage's summit finish, saying he and others felt hypothermic.
Oliver Naesen also told Sporza that soon after the stage got back up and running, Movistar hit the front before all of the riders were back in the fold. Oh, Movistar. Never change.
In the time-honoured, 'back in my day' tradition, race director Thierry Gouvenou said: “The fact is: we have had other editions of Paris-Nice in which riders rode in ten centimetres of snow." Which obviously makes everything okay and riders should in fact be thanking him for the privilege of taking part in his series of freezing, four-hour long bike rides.
More bad news followed for Vingegaard on stage 5 as he crashed, in a moment not seen by the TV cameras. His teammate Matteo Jorgenson said the Dane told him mid-stage he was having trouble holding his handlebars and braking, while Visma's Victor Campenaerts added he didn't think his team leader seemed completely lucid post-crash, with Vingegaard later saying he was both in pain and dizzy. Thankfully, Vingegaard's hand injury proved to only be bruising, but on Friday morning it was announced he'd withdrawn from the race. Probably a good idea as the poor weather doesn't look like abating, with Saturday's queen stage expecting 30 centimetres of snow at the summit.
This at least solves Visma-Lease a Bike's leadership puzzle at the race, with Matteo Jorgenson now the team's sole rider anywhere near the top of the GC.
Earlier in the week, ITV's Daniel Friebe had tried to pry an answer out of Jorgenson as to who Visma's Paris-Nice leader was.
"Fans and the public want to know, who was stronger, you or Jonas, that final kilometre?" Friebe asked.
"I'll let the public decide," Jorgenson replied.
"It's a bike race, not a referendum," Friebe rightly pointed out.
"We're on the same team here, okay," came Jorgenson's final, probably exasperated, response. Asking from the perspective of media that thrives off of drama and beef (no matter how frivolous or spurious), can team boss Richard Plugge extend his 4D-chess PR tactics to fake leadership battles? Please, we don't ask for much.
Things you can't unsee 🫣
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