Primoz Roglic strengthened his overall lead in the Paris-Nice by powering to victory on the seventh stage on Saturday, a 119.2-km ride from Le Broc.
The Vuelta a Espana champion took his third stage win in this year’s edition with a late acceleration on the final climb to La Colmiane (16.3km at 6.3%) to beat Gino Mader (Bahrain Victorious) by two seconds. Maximilian Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) finished third, five seconds off the pace.
“At the end, there was a possibility [to win the stage], and I went for it,” Roglic said. “It was hard all day, from the beginning. It was ‘short but sweet’, as we say. It was really really tight, but luckily I managed to come first over the finish line.”
Roglic now holds a 52-second lead over Schachmann, with Aleksandr Vlasov in third place, 1:11 off the pace.
Sunday’s eighth and final stage is a 93-km ride from Le-plan-du-Var to Levens, after the initial course, a ride around Nice, was changed amid a weekend lockdown in some Cote d’Azur cities because of COVID-19.
