Race to the Sun course breaks with the past: no prologue and longest time trial in many years
Race organiser ASO has announced the route for this year’s Paris-Nice, the first major European stage race of the year and the first European event in the International Cycling Union (UCI) WorldTour. This year’s “Race to the Sun” will be of a slightly different format to previous years, eschewing the usual prologue time trial, and will cover a longer distance than usual, at 1307km.
The race will begin in Houdan in the department of Yvelines, to the west of Paris, on March 6th with a 154.5km road stage: it will then make its way south and east through Burgundy, the Rhone Valley and Provence, before finishing on the south coast with the usual Nice stage over the Col d’Eze the following Sunday.
ASO hopes that the non-traditional parcours will create an “attritional” race, with the main difficulties spread across the second half of the week. In the first few stages the rouleurs should have the upper hand as the route crosses the Beauce plain and the Morvan region; the fourth and fifth stages though, which cross the Fut d’Avenas, the Col de la Croix-de-Chaubouret and the Col de la Mûre will open the race up to the climbers.
In the absence of a prologue, the time triallists have 27km between Rognes and Aix-en-Provence, the longest in the race since 1968, to try to make up time on the climbers.
Organisers hope, that with the wide variety of stages, the race offers something to every type of rider.
The stages of Paris-Nice 2011:
Stage 1, Sunday 6th March: Houdan - Houdan (154.5km)
Stage 2, Monday 7th March: Montfort-l’Amaury - Amilly (198.5km)
Stage 3, Tuesday 8th March: Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire - Nuits-Saint-Georges (202.5km)
Stage 4, Wednesday 9th March: Crêches-sur-Saône - Belleville (191km)
Stage 5, Thursday 10th March: Saint-Symphorien-sur-Coise - Vernoux-en-Vivarais (194km)
Stage 6, Friday 11 March: Rognes - Aix-en-Provence (individual time-trial (27km)
Stage 7, Saturday 12th March: Brignoles - Biot Sofia-Antipolis (215.5km)
Stage 8, Sunday 13th March: Nice - Nice (124km)
Teams invited to Paris-Nice 2011:
AG2R La Mondiale
Astana
BMC Racing Team
Euskaltel-Euskadi
Garmin-Cervélo
HTC-Highroad
Katusha Team
Lampre-ISD
Leopard Trek
Liquigas-Cannondale
Movistar Team
OmegaPharma-Lotto
Quick Step
Rabobank
RadioShack
Saxo Bank-SunGard
Sky Procycling
Vacansoleil-DCM
Bretagne-Schuller
Cofidis
Europcar
FDJ