Two-time former Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar came through the "first really difficult" day of his season to take full control of Paris-Nice on Saturday after winning the seventh stage.

Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) and Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) will battle next week at Paris-Nice, their first face-to-face of 2023, continuing the fight from last year's Tour de France.

Australia's Jay Vine claimed his first WorldTour victory in the Tour Down Under on Sunday, with Britain's Simon Yates winning a thrilling uphill battle to take the race's final stage.

Cycling's Vuelta a España embarks Friday with defending champion Primoz Roglic chasing an unprecedented fourth straight victory over a mountainous 3,280km route that begins, however, on the flatlands of the Netherlands.

Primoz Roglic and Simon Yates remain on course for a Paris-Nice showdown on Saturday's climb stage after outsider Mathieu Burgaudeau of TotalEnergies won the hilly stage six on Friday with the main contenders finishing together.

The 2019 and 2020 editions of the Tour de France were won by two of the youngest riders in the history of the race. Tadej Pogacar and Egan Bernal are at the forefront of a new generation of young cyclists which are continually raising the bar and upsetting the established favorites. The 2021 Tour de France will be another battle between the dynamic youth and the experienced establishment.

Chaque instant du Tour de France risque de faire basculer la course, mais voici les cinq étapes les plus susceptibles de décider du classement final de l’édition 2021.

The 2021 Tour de France covers 3,383 kilometers. Any one of those kilometers can provide the right mixture of circumstances for a race-winning attack, or a race-losing mishap. Such is the nature of the sport.

Multiple riders and staff have tested positive for COVID-19 the UCI and RCS Sport announced in a joint press release. The tests were the first round, conducted during the rest day, in addition to the multiple safety measures the Giro d’Italia have had in place since the depart in Sicily. Mitchelton-Scott was the worst hit, with several staff members returning positive tests after their GC hopeful, Simon Yates, tested positive several days into the first week. The team released a statement soon after. 

British rider Alex Dowsett made a solo break from a long range escape group to win the eighth stage of the Giro d'Italia on Saturday as Portugal's Joao Almeida retained the leader's pink jersey.

Simon Yates has withdrawn from the 2020 Giro d’Italia after testing positive for Covid-19, his Mitchelton-Scott team announced Saturday. The British rider and recent winner of Tirreno Adriatico becomes the first rider to test positive at the race. All of his teammates returned negative tests and have been cleared to race, the team added. Yates was a favorite for the overall, sitting 21st in the general classification standings prior to withdrawing ahead of stage 8.

Geraint Thomas lost more than 11 minutes as Ecuadorian Jonathan Caicedo won the Giro d'Italia's third stage on Mount Etna on Monday.

Italian Diego Ulissi of the UAE team won an uphill dash for the line on stage 2 of the Giro d'Italia on Sunday as compatriot Filippo Ganna kept the overall leader's pink jersey.

World champion Filippo Ganna produced a flying performance to win the Giro d'Italia's opening day time-trial in Palermo on Saturday and claim the 21-day race's first pink jersey as overall leader.

The 2020 Giro d’Italia was originally intended to be an appealing parcours for riders who were targeting the Tokyo Olympics at the end of the season. A lot changed since the route was originally penned out, but the stages have remained largely the same.