The sun shone on Australian champion Luke Plapp as he spent his first day in the yellow race leader’s jersey at Paris-Nice, and then secured it for another day.
After some hard work in the hills on the previous stage, the peloton’s thoughts turned to a sprint finish heading into Sisteron.
An early breakaway set the tone for the day as Team Jayco AlUla worked to both keep Plapp safe in yellow and try to set up Dylan Groenewegen for the potential bunch sprint.
There were some late attacks from several of the general classification contenders, but the moves were shut down.
In the frenetic finish, Groenewegen took a minor placing but Plapp was able to cross the line safe in the knowledge that he had another day in yellow ahead of him.
Luke Plapp (Race leader)
“It was nice. The sun was out, and the French roads were beautiful today, I really enjoyed it. It was a super-fast and frantic finish trying to catch the breakaway. It was a beautiful day and I really like being in yellow.
Today was a nice recovery day after a hard effort yesterday. I think tomorrow is going to be hard but we don’t really know what to expect. Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of guys that want to make up time on the GC, too. We don’t know what to expect any more in cycling and we’ll be ready for anything tomorrow.”
2024 Paris-Nice overall classification after stage 5
1 Luke Plapp (Team Jayco AlUla) 17:38:48
2 Santiago Buitrago +00:13
3 Brandon McNulty +00:27
Photo: Sprint Cycling
