The first stage of Paris-Nice this year was won by Luke Lamperti of EF Education-EasyPost, ending a long drought for his team. At the French race, however, all eyes are particularly on Jonas Vingegaard, who made his seasonal debut yesterday. At the start of the first stage, the Dane was confident, saying he felt good and wanted to see how the race would go. At the finish, however, the two-time Tour de France winner was anything but calm and expressed his concerns about the many crashes during the race.

«It was a stressful day. Very stressful: I hope that not all my race days will be like this this year. Because if they were, it would absolutely not be fun». Vingegaard arrived safely with the main group, but there were several crashes in the final kilometer. That's why the Dane stayed a bit back and preferred to proceed cautiously to avoid getting caught up in any group crashes. The riders did hit the ground in the last three kilometers, so there were no problems for the general classification contenders.

The Visma|Lease a Bike rider continued to express his concerns about the course in the brief interview: «I don't think yesterday's course was very good. I don't think it was worthy of a World Tour race – the Dane continued - Damaged roads, with constant changes of direction, potholes. Especially the final descent, which we had to do three times, was not up to the standard of a World Tour race».