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

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.

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.

“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."