The magic number

March 14 ^th 2025 - 03:48

Winning three stages of Paris-Nice is no meagre feat. One doesn’t need to go back very far in time to see a rider raise his arms aloft so often in a single edition of the Race to the Sun, but one will necessarily stumble on a special champion when looking for such dominance - Tadej Pogacar led the show on days 4, 7 and 8 of Paris-Nice 2023. Joao Almeida or Lenny Martinez, winners respectively at La Loge des Gardes and La Côte-Saint-André could emulate the Slovenian star with a stellar week-end around Nice. But first, sprinters want to have their say in Berre-l’Étang, where Tim Merlier eyes a shot at a third stage win this week-end.

The route from Saint-Julien-en-Saint-Alban is long (209.8km) and mostly flat (1,500m of elevation). It aligns pretty nicely with the course of the first couple of stages, especially en route to Bellegarde. If Merlier were to strike again, one would turn back the pages of Paris-Nice history much further than 2023 to find a comparable achievement. The last rider to win three sprints in the Race to the Sun was Tom Boonen in 2006. Sprinting was already a Belgian specialty. And Boonen and Merlier share many more common points, on top of being Belgians, as well as stars of the Quick-Step team.

For both of them, stage victory number 1 meant swapping a prestigious tunique (Boonen was the world champion at the time, Merlier is the reigning European champion) for the leader’s jersey of Paris-Nice. The very next day, they enforced their dominance wearing yellow. And Boonen was riding in green (just like Merlier these days) when he powered to his third win. Can Merlier make it here as well? It’s a magic number… But countless rivals want to overthrow him.