The 172-kilometer stage two again tailored to cycling’s fastmen and played a similar long, drawn-out song as day one – a lone Frenchman leading a lackadaisical peloton for most of the flat parcours. 

Arnaud Gérard (Bretagne-Séché) made a lonely, solo journey toward an unavoidable outcome, and with no added firepower in the escape he was easily caught with some 37 kilometers still to race.

It opened the door for late attacks and a dangerous trio made a stab at spoiling the sprinters’ glory as they bolted off the front with less than eight kilometers to go.  The three men kept the pressure on until finally at 1.5 kilometers the peloton hunted them down.  But there was no time for a collected sigh of relief as the peloton hurled itself under the red kite and toward the line. 

While André Greipel (Lotto Soudal) sprinted to the second stage honors, Nizzolo was caught too far out and the best he could muster was a disappointing 13th place.  In the high-stakes, full-speed game of the mass sprint there is no room for error; yesterday a touch of the brakes cost Nizzolo a better place, and today it was simply a mistake of waiting too long to move into position. 

“Today we just hit the last corner too far back,” explained a dejected Nizzolo. “It was a mistake for us to wait too long, but it was not easy to take the lead today because everyone was fresh in the end. My feeling was okay, it was not so hard, but the key to missing the result was simply being too far out of position.”

Paris-Nice will hit the hills in tomorrow’s stage three, but will more than likely end with a mass sprint finish for a third straight day and give Nizzolo a chance to make amends.

The GC contenders must patiently wait another day for the mountain climbs of stage four to arrive, although tomorrow will be a chance to shake out any cobwebs over the undulating parcours.

“It’s hard to say how I really feel since it has not been a hard race until now – except the last 20-kilometers today,” explained Bob Jungels as he did a short cool-down spin on the team’s CycleOps stationary trainer. “I feel good sensations on the bike, but until Thursday I will not really know. We have a good team here and with Riccardo [Zoidl] and me we have a good chance to be top 10 in the end, and that would be really good for us. I don’t have expectations to try and attack or set the tempo – with the big guys like [Tejay] van Garderen and Richie Porte here that would be suicide.  I am realistic - if I can follow these guys I am really happy.”