Piil wins Paris-Tours

Denmark's Jakob Piil outsprinted Jacky Durand of France to win the 96th Paris-Tours classic, penultimate World Cup race of the season. Paolo Bettini retains a slim 2-point overall lead on Johan Museeuw.

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The 29-year old CSC-Tiscali rider scored the biggest win of his career as part of a 5-man breakaway that took leave of the pack after only five kilometres. Durand of FDJeux.com often looked the strongest of the five until the last ten kilometres. Already last year, the 1998 winner of Paris-Tours had ridden in tandem with Richard Virenque after another long escape, only to run out of gas in the dying kilometres.

This time, after shedding the other escape riders, Durand again ran out of juice, leaving Piil to do all the work in the famed 2.6 km straightaway to the finish. The Frenchman made his move early with 300 metres remaining, but the Dane never relented and Durand faded in the dying feet.

Heartbreaking is how Durand described his second place: "at 7 km, I knew he was stronger," he told French television. "I knew I had to try something to win [so] I just stayed in his wheel and with 200 meters left, I took off, but with 30 metres left, I could see the line, I wanted the line, but I didn't have any more legs."

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Piil, the 2002 winner of the Tour of Denmark, had never won a major classic, finishing second in the Montluçon stage of last year's Tour de France.

With Allan Johansen of Fakta winning Paris-Bourges last Thursday, Danes have won the last two big races of the season in France, which bodes well ahead of next week's World Championships in Belgium. Last week, Piil and fellow CSC rider Nicki Sørensen were named team leaders for the Danes in Zolder.

Piil's win upsets the script for this year's Paris-Tours: all of the world's greatest sprinters had entered in hopes of gaining the psychological edge for Zolder. Instead, the breakaway left a lukewarm fight for third with Germany's Erik Zabel (Telekom) taking the pack sprint.

In a bid to gain back the overall World Cup lead, Johan Museeuw showed bravado in trying to put some distance between himself and Paolo Bettini, but in the end both finished out of the points.

Igor Astarloa, third overall in the World Cup standings, finished seventh on the day and now has 180 points (+7), while Bettini on 279 points leads Museeuw by 9 points, which means the World Cup will go down to the final race, the Tour of Lombardy, later this month.

Drawing more attention in Tours was Laurent Jalabert in his last competitive race in his native France. Crowds warmly cheered Jaja, who at 34, will bow out after he leads the French squad in Zolder next Sunday.