Matteo Trentin traps the French on Paris-Tours, Arnaud Démare bows out

The Italian won in the sprint on Sunday in a group of six which included three Frenchmen, two of whom joined in the red flame.

They had done almost everything right, but they scuttled in the last kilometer. The French Thibaud Gruel (Groupama-FDJ) and Paul Lapeira (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), who started 35 kilometers from the finish and were in the lead until the red flame, suddenly stopped riding, leaving a counter group notably composed of Matteo Trentin (Tudor) and Christophe Laporte (Visma-Lease A Bike) to attack them.

In the sprint, it was the 36-year-old Italian who finally won as an old curmudgeon, his third victory at Paris-Tours after 2015 and 2017. He was ahead of a rediscovered Laporte and the young Albert Philipsen (Lidl-Trek) on the line. Paul Lapeira (4th) and Thibaud Gruel (5th) finally finished just off the podium. Enough to nourish regrets for the two Tricolores.

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For Matteo Trentin, who had not won for more than a year during the Tour de Wallonie, this 32nd career success, almost unexpected, brought him back to his good years. “I won this race ten years ago, that has changed a lot. We were ten seconds behind but we knew it could happen that they (Lapeira et Gruel) look at each other in the finale. And that's it, it happened, we came back around the last corner“, reacted the Italian.

This race marks the end of the 2025 season for the vast majority of the peloton, it also marks the end of Arnaud Démare's career. The sprinter with 97 professional victories, who announced only a few days ago that Paris-Tours, which he won twice, would be his last, did not weigh in on the scenario but he was able to savor at the start, where he received the now traditional “wheel of honor” of the peloton for a runner's final race.

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“I obviously have lots of shared emotions. I'm proud of what I did, I loved doing it, and I'm already planning on lots of other things. I'm going to remember the incredible emotions that cycling has given me”, summed up the 34-year-old Beauvaisian. After 14 seasons among the pros, he left the peloton with a Monument (Milan-San Remo 2016), two stages in the Tour de France and eight in the Tour of Italy, where he also brought home two cyclamen jerseys from the points classification.