Despite what most people expected, Paris-Tours 2014 was not decided in a sprint today! The breakaway (well, what was left of it) continued till the end and Jelle Wallays (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise) managed to beat Thomas Voeckler (Team Europcar).

The summary of Paris-Tours 2014

Immediately after the start, a breakaway was formed at the initiative of Thomas Voeckler (Team Europcar) who got company from Yoann Paillot (La Pomme Marseille 13), Cesare Benedetti (Team NetApp-Endura), Kevin van Melsen (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) and Jelle Wallays (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise). Two riders chasing behind them, Pierre Gouault (BigMat-Auber 93) and Julien Duval (Roubaix Lille Métropole), rapidly joined them and the breakaway of the day with 7 riders was thus complete.

The peloton left its chance to this breakaway and their gap went thus up to 6'30" before going down progressively again, especially thanks to the hard work by the Giant-Shimano (for John Degenkolb) and FDJ.fr (for Arnaud Démare) teams. While the gap was around 2'30" at 58 kilometers from the finish, Pim Ligthart (Lotto-Belisol) and Maarten Tjallingii (Belkin Pro Cycling Team) briefly tried to get away chasing behind the 7 riders, about 15 kilometers further their adventure came to an end.

The rain was quite present in this 108th edition of Paris-Tours and it was thus not surprising to see that the wet roads led to several crashes. After a crash of about ten riders in the peloton, the bunch came back together and was still 2 minutes behind the 7 leading riders at 35 kilometers from the finish and while approaching the first climb, the Côte de Crochu.

In this climb, another crash, of Yoann Offredo (FDJ.fr), reduced the speed of the peloton again. The rider from the parisian area seemed to go too fast in the turn at the foot of the climb and sled away on the wet road. As a consequence, the peloton didn't really take any time on the leading group, which did however lose several elements, since Yoann Paillot, Cesare Benedetti, Pierre Gouault and Julien Duval were no longer to follow the pace set by Voeckler, Wallays and Van Melsen.
Another crash at about 15 kilometers again prevented the peloton to take back time on this leading trio and things thus started to look good for the breakaway.

Thomas Voeckler probably thought that this was a good occasion to maybe take the victory he was dreaming of for this year and thus accelerated in the climb of the Côte de Beausoleil which led Kevin van Melsen to drop from the breakaway. In this same climb, the peloton completely fell apart and in the Côte de l'Epan, at the foot of which the leading duo only has 29 seconds of its gap left, Cyril Lemoine (Cofidis, solutions crédits) decided to attack, joined by a small group of 7 other riders, among whom John Degenkolb (Team Giant-Shimano), one of the big favorites of this Paris-Tours, in case of a bunch sprint finish.

Because of the presence of the German sprinter, the chances of this chasing group were almost equal to zero because no one wanted to help the group progress with the risk of him beating you on the finish line. Good news thus for Voeckler and Wallays who still had about 40 seconds on the peloton when entering the last kilometer!

While Thomas Voeckler was the first to launch the sprint, Jelle Wallays awaited the right moment at about 200 meters from the finish line to accelerate to beat Voeckler quite easily! A victory for the Europcar rider, that'll be for another race again ...

After the finish, Jelle Wallays of course remembered winning Paris-Tours U23 in 2010, which also took place between Bonneval and Tours like today's race!

This year, Paris-Tours U23 was a race for the Dutch Rabobank Development Team with Mike Theunissen winning the race, ahead of his team mates Martijn Tusveld and Sam Oomen.

The classification of Paris-Tours 2014

Here's the top 10 of Paris-Tours 2014, 108th edition of this race:

1/ Jelle Wallays (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise) - 5h26'18"
2/ Thomas Voeckler (Team Europcar)
3/ Jens Debusschere (Lotto-Belisol) - +0'12"
4/ Roy Jans (Wanty-Groupe Gobert)
5/ Heinrich Haussler (IAM Cycling)
6/ Jean-Pierre Drucker (Wanty-Groupe Gobert)
7/ Kristian Sbaragli (MTN-Qhubeka)
8/ Pierre-Luc Périchon (Bretagne-Séché Environnement)
9/ Guillaume Levarlet (Cofidis, solutions crédits)
10/ Jos van Emden (Belkin Pro Cycling Team)

door Thomas Vergouwen
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