Halfway to the sun already and Primoz Roglic has taken complete control of the 79th edition of Paris-Nice, the Slovenian rider snatching first the yellow jersey as outright leader with his victory on stage 4 and also taking bonus prize of the green jersey ahead of Sam Bennett.
Bennett, now six points down on Roglic, will still wear that green jersey into Thursday’s stage 5 (given Roglic can only wear one jersey at a time), and with that the Irish rider will also get his next and perhaps final chance for a stage win on the mostly flat 203km run from Vienne to Bollene.
The stage 4 finish atop the summit of Chiroubles was always set to shake up the general classification, and so it proved. Roglic broke away off the front with just under 3km remaining to win that stage by 12 seconds, the team Jumbo-Visma rider comfortably ahead of Stefan Bissegger (EF Education-Nippo) after four hours and 49 minutes in and out of the saddle, the German rider still moving into second in the process.
Like he did in Tuesday’s time-trial, Bennett rode well within himself with Thursday’s flat stage in mind, the Deceuninck-QuickStep rider finishing part of the group just over 18 minutes down, saving the legs for Thursday.
It was another day of hard and arduous racing, one of the favourites and Giro d'Italia winner Tao Geoghegan Hart from Ineos Grenadiers forced to abandon the race after crashing on the descent of the penultimate climb of the day, to Mont Brouilly.
Roglic now has a comfortable 35-second lead in the GC, and already it seems is out to make amends in 2021 for his narrow defeat on the last time-trial stage of the 2020 Tour de France: "Definitely the goal is to have it in Nice," Roglic said of his race lead, "but yeah, we deserved it and I think we have a strong team here, so we go optimistic into the next stages. We'll do our best and we'll see what that means for the result."
Thursday’s stage 5 offers the sprinters the last chance to shine in the Race to the Sun, running mainly through the Rhône Valley, which also means crosswinds might play a part. Bennett won the opening stage into Saint-Cyr-l’École and is seeking a fifth outright Paris-Nice stage win, another victory likely to keep him in the mix for the green jersey.
