With a 4th place finish in yesterday's stage of Paris-Nice, Borut Bozic got his third top 10 placing in as many days of racing. He was encouraged by his performance, but was amazed by the peloton's behavior on a windy day.

Borut Bozic has entered Paris-Nice in amazing condition. An 8th place in the prologue was followed by a 9th in the sprint on Monday's opening stage before he landed just outside the podium yesterday.

In his assessment of the stage, he was, however, more impressed by the slow speed of the peloton throughout the day than his own performance. Strong headwinds meant that the peloton completed the stage with an average speed of just 35 km/h to arrive at the finish an hour later than the slowest predicted time schedule.

"I don't think I've ever been in a race that slow," Bozic told. "I felt sleepy at one point, and it wasn't until the last 30k that we went full gas."

The difficult conditions made it difficult for any breakaways to realistically believe in success. As a consequence, the stage had a strange development where the early breakaway of Gatis Smukulis (Katusha), Mads Christensen (Saxo-Tinkoff) and Kris Boeckmans (Vacansoleil-DCM) gave up their attempt very early in the stage.

"The breakaway got to the first bonus sprint, and one rider (Boeckmans, ed.) just stopped to wait for the group," Bozic explained. "When the other two riders realized that it would be impossible for them to go to the finish, they stopped too. Then the peloton slowed down to about 30k an hour, and there was no real motivation from anybody to go. I don't like racing like that."

A difficult sprint

With his victory in an uphill sprint in the 2011 edition of the Tour de Suisse, yesterday's rising final straight was tailormade for the powerful Slovenian. He fancied his chances and ended up at Petacchi's wheel. However, the veteran Italian produced his final effort too early, and Bozic ended in a difficult position.

"I went with Lampre, but I think they worked too hard too early, and in the last 200m I had no chance to accelerate," Bozic explained. "The other riders behind me had the advantage and were much too strong for me to catch. Plus it was a full headwind and no place to hide. Still, I'm happy with 4th today, and I'm optimistic that tomorrow will be another chance to do better."

A much better day

Even if the circumstances of the sprint had not been in favor of Bozic, sport director Dmitriy Fofonov was clear that he would have had little chance to beat stage winner Marcel Kittel (Argos-Shimano). With the loss of Kevin Seeldraeyers due to a crash of the first stage, Fofonov was happy to see his squad pass the nervous stage unscathed.

"Kittel was too powerful in the sprint, just unbeatable," Fofonov said. "Today was a long, long day for us. But it was altogether better than yesterday. We had some rain in the race, and the road was dirty and caused Egor Silin to fall. He got up and back on the bike, and he's okay, nothing is wrong. But after losing Seeldraeyers yesterday it's always a little bit nervous."

The race continues today with its third stage. With a 2nd category climb just 15,5 km from the finish, many sprinters are expected to be put into difficulty. Being a strong climber, Bozic has a great chance to continue his impressive run of results.