Cycling news - Simon Yates claims first Time Trial win at Paris-Nice

ByEurosport

Updated 14/03/2019 at 19:52 GMT

Simon Yates powered to victory on the stage five time trial of Paris-Nice, the first time trial win of his career.

Simon Yates of United Kingdom and Team Mitchelton - Scott / Celebration / during the 77th Paris - Nice 2019, Stage 5 a 25,5km Individual Time Trial stage from Barbentane to Barbentane.

Image credit: Eurosport

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The Mitchelton-Scott rider set a powerful time early on Thursday that nobody could match as the Vuelta a Espana winner claimed unexpected glory.

The British rider set a time of 30:26 over the 25.5km stage with Nils Politt of Team Katusha-Alpecin finishing second seven seconds behind and overall leader Michal Kwiatkowski of Team Sky coming in 11 seconds back.

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Kwiatkowski extends his overall lead to 19 seconds ahead of his Team Sky team-mate Egan Bernal.

“I am really happy with my performance, I have been working on my time trial quite a lot the last few years but I didn’t really expect to be fastest today. At the start of the day I thought it was for the TT specialists. So especially with how this course was I am very happy," said Yates.

It was really straight forward, there weren’t any corners you really needed to brake for, it was just in the skis, so a pretty filthy time trial for a guy of my size.The climb in the middle wasn’t real hard, the climb up to the finish line was probably harder so I am really happy with what I did today.

“The sensations are good for the next days, I knew I had good form, well decent form coming into the race and just got caught out in the crosswinds, it wasn’t from a lack of form or anything."