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.

The French stage race runs from Sunday to Sunday, March 5th to 12th. Known as the Race to the Sun, it goes from outskirts of Paris to Nice on the southern coast of France. With its yellow jersey and same organizing body, it's one of the biggest tune-up races towards the Tour de France with the Critérium du Dauphiné.

Pogacar won the Tour de France in 2020 and 2021 but succumbed to Vingegaard and the Jumbo-Visma team in 2022. The battle for supremacy continues into this season. Both come in hot to Paris-Nice, Pogacar having won four races, including the overall of the Vuelta a Andalucía. Dane Vingegaard winning in his first three race days which gave him the overall at O Gran Camiño.

Anything and everything could happen over the eight days. Paris-Nice typically delivers crosswind stages in the first days, this year a 32.2km team time trial, and of course mountain passes in the race's tail end. And that final stage puts everyone on edge with the coastal climbs around Nice.

In 2022, Primoz Roglic overcame bad luck of previous editions to conquer the race with the help of a Jumbo-Visma team that included Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte. Roglic is racing Tirreno-Adriatico instead in 2023 gearing towards the Giro d'Italia, but Vingegaard can still count on a super-charged squad.

Focusing on just Pogacar and Vingegaard would be a mistake with several heavy hitters filling out the start list like Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla), Daniel Martínez (INEOS Grenadiers) and Ben O'Connor (Ag2r-Citroën).

Canadian Hugo Houle (Israel-Premier Tech) will be fighting for stages and the US has two serious contenders on flying form with Powless and Jorgenson

Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) is enjoying one of his best starts to a season with two wins including the Etoile de Bessèges overall. Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar), who just battled through the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, recently won his first ever race and the overall at the Tour of Oman.

Both will want to take the final yellow jersey on the Côte d'Azur, their European base, and round out an A-list of contenders for the 2023 Paris-Nice