Paris-Nice<\/a> tradition, no fun. It\u2019s never been a flat parade stage like other multi-day races tend to have. The last day of racing featured three big ole Category 1 climbs to break some already tenderized gams.<\/p>\nWith Vingegaard leading Dani Mart\u00ednez by more than three minutes at the start, the overall win appeared secure. The battle for the podium,however, remained wide open with riders like Georg Steinhauser and K\u00e9vin Vauquelin still close behind.<\/p>\n
Valentin Paret\u2011Peintre launched a solo move after the early break fractured on the slopes of the Col de la Porte. Paret-Peintre was eventually reeled in with 24 km remaining. On the final climb, the C\u00f4te du Linguador, Vingegaard accelerated and only Lenny Martinez could follow. The young Frenchman later edged the sprint for the stage win, while Dani Mart\u00ednez dug deep behind to secure second overall.<\/p>\n
Zukowsky on the week of racing<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Zuke was trying to survive the day, and defend the unexpected GC position he\u2019d earned earlier in the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, it was kind of a crazy week,\u201d he said. \u201cI came here with zero ambitions for GC. I was just in a teammate role.\u201d<\/p>\n
That changed quickly after crashes and bad luck hit the team. On the last day of racing Pinarello-Q36.5 had just two riders left in the race.<\/p>\n
Zukowsky had also lost time early because he wasn\u2019t thinking about the overall standings. \u201cThe first few days I gave up some free time because GC wasn\u2019t even on my mind,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter that it was just about holding the position I had. Or doing better if possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The final stage was even harder than expected. Zukowsky said he woke up feeling ill on Sunday morning. That made the prospect of the brutal finale around Nice even more daunting.<\/p>\n
Suffering through Stage 8<\/p>\n
\u201cI was stressing a bit because everyone knows the last stage here is super hard,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve lived here for four years, so I know these roads like the back of my hand and I really wanted to have a good day. But with how I felt this morning\u2026I kind of felt like garbage all day.\u201d<\/p>\n
He leaned heavily on experienced teammate David de la Cruz, a two-time winner at Paris-Nice.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was dragging me around most of the day on the climbs,\u201d Zukowsky said. \u201cThen I tried to do a bit more on the descents because I know them well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, the Canadian slowly lost time as the race wore on. \u201cI was shipping a few minutes here and there on every climb,\u201d he said. \u201cNot ideal, but considering how I felt, I\u2019m pretty happy with the mindset, just fighting all day.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a week of attrition, simply reaching the finish with a strong GC result felt like a victory in itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI basically rode myself into the ground today,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a hard week for everyone, so I just wanted to give everything I had to reward the team. I wasn\u2019t expecting this result at all, so in the end I\u2019m really happy, and the team is happy too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jonas Vingegaard took overall victory at Paris\u2013Nice on Sunday, adding another dub to his impressive palmares. But in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19809,1230,10677,936,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-33413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zurich","8":"tag-2026-paris-nice","9":"tag-feature","10":"tag-nickolas-zukowsky","11":"tag-spotlight","12":"tag-zurich"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116241810265958716","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}