John Degenkolb (Giant-Shimano) won his second consecutive Paris-Bourges when he beat AG2R’s Yauheni Hutarovich and Trek’s Giacomo Nizzolo in a bunch sprint.

The riders got underway under grey skies and not long after they had started, it began to rain on the course.

As expected at a one-day race, there were plenty of riders trying to get into the day’s breakaway and show their jersey to the public. This all meant that it wasn’t until with 129km to go from the 190km race that a break was formed. It contained 6 men: Damien Gaudin (AG2R La Mondiale), Guillaume Levarlet (Cofidis), Thomas Vaubourzeix (La Pomme Marseille 13), Jonathan Dufrasne (Wallonie-Bruxelles), Grischa Janorschke (Team Vorarlberg) and Lennard Hofstede (Rabobank Development Team).

Once the break was established, the peloton was content to sit up, and with 115km to go, the break had a lead of 5’15. This lead increased until 100km to go, when the bunch began to bring it back under the impetus of Giant-Shimano, who were riding for defending champion John Dehenkolb.

As the break hit the first serious climb of the day, both Janorschke and Hofstede fell off the pace, with Hofstede losing ground due to a puncture. The group continued to lose ground and this caused a group to bridge up to the break with 36km to go, containing Hutarovich, Haussler, Jerome, Mederel, Kreuziger, Stuyven, Fouchard, Rossetto and Turgis. They gained a maximum of 40 seconds on the bunch but with some tired members already in the group, it didn’t ever look like succeeding.

Yet the peloton, stil led by Giant and AG2R never closed the gap properly and the break gained confidence and with 11km to go, Stuyven attacked. He had a 5 second gap to the break and a 20 second gap on the peloton. Maxime Mederal attacked again just as the group was swallowed up by the charging peloton.

However, AG2R were setting a vicious tempo at the head of the group and with 5km it was all back together and Europcar’s Thomas Voeckler was the next man to attack.

However, he barely got s gap and it was set to come down to the bunch sprint, as Paris-Bourges so often does. In the end, Degenkolb had the perfect leadout and a tired Hutarovich just help of Nizzolo for third.

The race is a good indicator for form ahead of tomorrow’s Paris-Tours and we should see the same protagonists then as we did in Paris-Bourges.