Sky’s Bradley Wiggins turned in the fastest time of the day to win both Stage Eight and the General Classification of the 2012 Paris-Nice Cycling race, beating Vacansoleil’s Liuwe Westra by two seconds in the 9.6-km uphill time trial.
Wiggins thanked his team on the Sky website: “I’m pleased more for everyone else rather than myself after all the hard work the boys have put in this week. Ultimately it fell on my shoulders to finish the job off and I’m just made up that I was able to do that.”
The Sky rider said after the opening time trial that he was in the best form of his life, and he showed it; only once, when Westra beat him in Stage Five, was Wiggins not the strongest rider among the leaders.
Westra turned in an amazing ride of his own in his effort to take the overall win. Westra’s time of 19:14 was 33 seconds faster than that of third placed-Jean-Christophe Peraud of Ag2R.
Wiggins became only the second rider from Great Britain to win Paris-Nice; British rider Tom Simpson won the race 45 years ago, in 1967.
“It’s massive to win this race,”Wiggins said on teamsky.com. “I really think about things like that but I’ve tried not to think too much about it in the last few days. To follow in Tom Simpson’s footsteps and become the second British rider to win Paris-Nice is something special.
“I'd probably say it’s one of my biggest wins—as was the Dauphiné—and to have both those on my palmares is a huge honor.”
Alejandro Valverde finished fifth on the day and third overall, unable to match the two time-trial specialists, Wiggins and Westra. Katusha’s Simon Spilak finished fourth on the stage and overall
Young American Tejay Van Garderen finished 14th on the stage and fifth overall; not the win he had hoped for but a good result nonetheless.
Levi Leipheimer, recovering from three crashes in Stage Seven which took him out of contention fot eh GC win, came home 22nd, 1:33 off the pace—probably too sore from the day before to make a full effort. The RadioShack rider, who had been third in GC at the start of Stage Seven, with a great chance for an overall win, finished 35th in GC.
| Paris-Nice Stage 8 Results | |||
| Rider | Team | Time | |
| 1 | Bradley Wiggins | Sky | 0:19:12 |
| 2 | Lieuwe Westra | Vacansoleil-DCM | 0:00:02 |
| 3 | Jean-Christophe Peraud | Ag2R | 0:00:33 |
| 4 | Simon Spilak | Katusha | 0:00:47 |
| 5 | Jerome Coppel | Saur-Sojasun | 0:00:51 |
| 6 | Alejandro Valverde | Movistar | 0:00:52 |
| 7 | Andreas Klöden | RadioShack-Nissan | 0:00:58 |
| 8 | David Moncoutie | Cofidis | 0:00:59 |
| 9 | Damiano Cunego | Lampre-ISD | 0:00:59 |
| 10 | Rigoberto Uran | Sky | 0:01:06 |
| General Classification after Stage 8 | |||
| Rider | Team | Time | |
| 1 | Bradley Wiggins | Sky | 28:12:16 |
| 2 | Lieuwe Westra | Vacansoleil-DCM | +00:08 |
| 3 | Alejandro Valverde | Movistar | +01:10 |
| 4 | Simon Spilak | Katusha | +01:24 |
| 5 | Tejay Van Garderen | BMC | +01:54 |
| 6 | Arnold Jeannesson | FDJ-Bigmat | +02:13 |
| 7 | Maxime Monfort | RadioShack-Nissan | +02:21 |
| 8 | Sylvain Chavanel | Omega Pharma-QuickStep | +02:42 |
| 9 | Robert Kiserlovski | Astana | +03:30 |
| 10 | Angel Vicioso | Katusha | +03:59 |
