Primoz Roglic claimed his second victory in this year’s Paris-Nice as he won the sixth stage, a 202.4-km ride from Brignoles to Biot, to extend his overall lead on Friday.
The Vuelta a Espana champion beat sprinters Christophe Laporte and Michael Matthews at the end of a short uphill drag.
The Slovenian, who will be hoping to win the Tour de France after cracking in the final time trial while wearing the yellow jersey last year, now leads Maximilian Schachmann by 41 seconds and Ion Izagirre by 50.
“It’s just cool to win like this. It’s something new again and I’m super, super happy to do it,” Roglic said. “It was just the whole day really hard, really from the beginning, and that’s why I thought at the end, ‘We’re all tired, so why not?’ It was beautiful that I could do it.”
Saturday’s seventh stage will take the peloton from Le Broc to La Colmiane over 199.2-km after organisers were forced to change the course to avoid Nice amid a local weekend lockdown enforced to contain the spread of COVID-19.
