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The opening stage of the 2025 Étoile de Bessèges promised crosswinds and echelons however, in the long run, the entire peloton hurtled into the ultimate kick to the road in Bellegarde with Paul Magnier of Soudal-QuickStep out-sprinting Jordi Meeus of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and Marijn van den Berg of EF Education-EasyPost to victory.
Starting in Bellegarde, the race took on three loops across the city with two class three climbs alongside the way in which, earlier than finally ending up the 600 metre remaining kicker of the Cote de la Tour after 159km of racing.
The race started with a plethora of assaults earlier than 4 riders had been finally allowed a niche after round 5km of racing. They had been Victor Vercouillie (Flander-Baloise), Axel Mariault (CIC-U-Nantes), Axandre Van Petegem (Wagner Bazin WB) and Célestin Guillon (Van Rysel Roubaix) with the peloton permitting them a most hole of simply over six minutes.
Soudal-QuickStep and Lotto did nearly all of the work within the peloton and commenced to erode the hole to the break with round 120km to go. The wind was an element however the peloton was being very cagey.
Both king of the mountain sprints had been gained by Alexandre Van Petegem who will put on the mountains jersey on stage two. The break had been then caught only a few kilometres later with 38km to go because the peloton started to actually up the tempo.
Ineos Grenadiers had been the primary group to come back up en masse with Ben Turner, Josh Tarling, Filippo Ganna and Axel Laurance all pushing to try to break up issues up. The echelons started to type however the peloton didn’t actually break up that a lot.
The race changed into a head wind and the tempo fully disappeared. There was wave after wave of assaults from a number of the third and second division groups. The peloton wasn’t too eager to let something go.
With 24km to go there was an assault from three riders who got extra of a niche than the earlier accelerations. The three riders had been Lennert Belmans (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Baptiste Planckaert (Van Rysel Roubaix) and Maël Guégan (CIC-U-Nantes).
Uno-X Mobility then got here to the entrance to try to break up the race, but once more. This dragged the brand new breakaway again. They had been changed by Unibet Tietema Rockets and Ineos Grenadiers. However, the wind was simply not robust sufficient to separate the bunch.
Multiple groups battled it out within the remaining few kilometres to try to get their sprinters into the very best place earlier than the very tight streets in Bellegarde.
Notably, Lidl-Trek had been nowhere to be seen into the ultimate 2km. Some wind and a few poorly positioned police bikes meant that the race was strung proper out earlier than heading into Bellegarde for the ultimate time.
Unibet Tietema Rockets positioned Slovakian nationwide champion, Lukáš Kubiš, completely. However, Lotto and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe pushed handed together with Soudal-QuickStep.
And within the remaining few metres it was the 20-year-old French sprinter, Paul Magnier of Soudal-QuickStep, who took the win with Meeus and Van den Berg finishing the rostrum.
Belgian nationwide champion, Arnaud De Lie (Lotto), was proper up within the combat however appeared to unclip and misplaced lots of momentum. Whereas, different huge favorite Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) was nowhere to be seen.
Stage 2 of the Etoile de Besseges 2025 comes tomorrow with a 166km stage from Domessargues to Marguerittes, the longest stage of the race, with the identical riders seemingly concerned then.
More to come back…
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