Paris-Nice 2024: Olav Kooij swoops round the outside to steal Stage 5 sprint with stylish finish

A superb manoeuvre from Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) saw him come from behind to secure a thrilling sprint victory on Stage 5 of Paris-Nice, his second win of the week.

Coming into the sprint finish, Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) had a nice leadout, with Pascal Ackermann (Israel Premier Tech Academy) behind, as it looked set to be a two-horse race.

But Kooij came from deep and swerved round on the left to pass the tiring duo at the front and beat them to the line.

It is the second win of the race for 22-year-old Kooij and his status as a rising star of the sport is marked by the fact that he has won something in every race he has competed in this season.

Lucas Plapp (Jayco-AlUla) remains in the yellow jersey.

“It was quite a tough day,” confessed Kooij. “With the headwinds it was very hard to control a strong breakaway especially after two guys raced across.

“So we had to work very hard all day and in the final most teams didn’t have many guys left to control so I had to find my way and luckily I was able to open up.

“First day was the perfect start, in the second sprint we made some mistakes and today we just committed to it with the whole team and we had a great plan and really happy I could take my second win of the week.

“For me it’s been a really good week and a huge success. We have some more goals with Matteo [Jorgenson] and Wilco [Kelderman] for the weekend so we’re not done yet as a team but so far really good week for us.”

Ackermann, who ultimately came third, added: “It was a super hard stage today, a big breakaway all day and it was hard. In the last kilometres it was really nervous and in the last climb with 10km to go everyone started to attack.

“So it was super hard and I was happy to find the wheel of Mads, I just didn’t have the legs to pass first and I went a bit too early, had to wait a bit more. It was my first sprint this season so I was really happy to find a good sprint and we’ve got some more coming up.”

Earlier in the day the attack from within the peloton had come relatively early. With no serious GC contenders, the peloton was more than content to let the breakaway go.

From that move, Pierre Latour (TotalEnergies) made it a hat-trick in the KOM checkpoints.

Through the day the gap fluctuated around the minute mark and, with around 80km left, there was a counter-attack from within the peloton as Pascal Eenkhoorn and Victor Campenaerts (both Lotto-Dstny) came up to join them.

The gap never breached the three-minute mark as the teams with sprint contenders did what was needed to keep it at a manageable distance.

As the race reached the final 30km, riders began to drop out of the leading group, including Latour, and with 23.3km left there were just five left.

At just under 10km remaining, the peloton looked to swallow up the group – but interestingly that sparked a new group to try and form at the front.

Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) was part of the group that was trying to break away and the peloton was clearly caught on the hop as they tried to make sure the Belgian didn’t get pull clear.

The group was reined in and the teams then set themselves up for the sprint finish, where Kooij took centre-stage.