Cycling: Solar pips Yates to Paris-Nice overall victory

[March 12, 2018]    PARIS (Reuters) - Spain’s Marc Soler was rewarded for his long-rage attack in the final stage as he beat Britain's Simon Yates by four seconds to win the Paris-Nice race on Sunday.

The Movistar rider jumped away from the group of favorites with more than 50 kilometers left in the 110-km mountainous ride around Nice to take third place in the eighth stage won by fellow Spaniard David de la Cruz of Team Sky.

It gave Soler a four-second bonus that helped him move past overnight leader Yates after the Mitchelton-Scott rider was dropped in the last ascent of the day.

Yates made contact with other favorites in the descent into Nice but finished sixth, 38 seconds behind De La Cruz and second placed Omar Fraile of Spain. He was 35 seconds adrift of Soler.

The 24-year-old Soler in 2015 won the Tour de l’Avenir, a mini Tour de France for the under-23 riders.

Another Spaniard, Gorka Izaguirre, took third place overall. He was 14 seconds off the pace despite crashing in the final descent, while his Bahrain-Merida team mate and brother Jon ended up fourth.

(Reporting by Julien Pretot, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

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