Two days after he missed out on the win in stage 3, Davide Cimolai (Lampre-Merida) confirmed his huge progress when he won the tough uphill sprint in stage 5 of Paris-Nice. The Italian just managed to pass an impressive Bryan Coquard (Europcar) while Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEDGE) had to settle for third. Michal Kwiatkowski (Etixx-QuickStep) finished just outside the top 10 and defended the overall lead.

In the first part of his career, Davide Cimolai has mostly been known as a very loyal lead-out man for riders like Alessandro Petacchi and Sacha Modolo. Hence, it came as a big surprise when the Italian won the hard Italian one-day Trofeo Laigueglia after having won the sprint from a reduced bunch.

The result gave him confidence that he could excel in sprints at the end of hard races and so he lined up for this week’s Paris-Nice with huge confidence. After having been riding in support of Niccolo Bonifazio in the first two sprint stages, he got his own chance in stage 3 and he immediately paid back his team for the confidence when he finished second behind Michael Matthews.

That result made him one to look out for in today’s stage 5 which again finished with a short, steep climb to the finish. Again Lampre-Merida put their full team behind the Italian and this time he did even better when he just managed to pass Bryan Coquard to take the biggest win of his short career.

"It was a very fast stage but I felt OK," he said. "I finished second in the stage in St Pourcain and I really wanted to bring a victory back home. Paris-Nice is one of my favorite events and this is an important victory for me. I'm feeling better and better and in previous years I used to go on Tirreno. I'm glad I changed my approach this season. I hope this will help me get a leader's position in Milan-San Remo."