The opening stage of the 2025 Étoile de Bessèges promised crosswinds and echelons but, in the end, the whole peloton hurtled into the final kick to the line 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 around the town with two category three climbs along the way, before eventually finishing up the 600-metre final kicker of the Cote de la Tour after 159km of racing.
The race began with a plethora of attacks before four riders were eventually allowed a gap after around 5km of racing. They were Victor Vercouillie (Flander-Baloise), Axel Mariault (CIC-U-Nantes), Axandre Van Petegem (Wagner Bazin WB) and Célestin Guillon (Van Rysel Roubaix) with the peloton allowing them a maximum gap of just over six minutes.
Soudal-QuickStep and Lotto did the majority of the work in the peloton and began to erode the gap to the break with around 120km to go. The wind was a factor but the peloton was being very cagey.
Both king of the mountain sprints were won by Axandre Van Petegem who will wear the mountains jersey on stage two. The break was then caught just a few kilometres later with 38km to go as the peloton began to really up the pace.
Ineos Grenadiers were the first team to come up en masse with Ben Turner, Josh Tarling, Filippo Ganna and Axel Laurance all pushing to try and split things up. The echelons began to form but the peloton didn’t really split that much.
The race turned into a headwind and the pace completely disappeared. There was wave after wave of attacks from some of the third and second-division teams. The peloton wasn’t too keen to let anything go.
With 24km to go there was an attack from three riders who were given more of a gap than the previous accelerations. The three riders were Lennert Belmans (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Baptiste Planckaert (Van Rysel Roubaix) and Maël Guégan (CIC-U-Nantes).
Uno-X Mobility then came to the front to try and split the race, yet again. This dragged the new breakaway back. They were replaced by Unibet Tietema Rockets and Ineos Grenadiers. However, the wind was just not strong enough to split the bunch.
Multiple teams battled it out in the final few kilometres to try and get their sprinters into the best possible position before the very tight streets in Bellegarde.
Notably, Lidl-Trek were nowhere to be seen into the final 2km. Some wind and some poorly placed police bikes meant that the race was strung right out before heading into Bellegarde for the final time.
Unibet Tietema Rockets placed Slovakian national champion, Lukáš Kubiš, perfectly. However, Lotto and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe pushed passed along with Soudal-QuickStep.
And in the final 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 completing the podium.
Belgian national champion, Arnaud De Lie (Lotto), was right up in the fight but appeared to unclip and lost a lot of momentum. Whereas, other big favourite 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 same riders likely involved then.
Results
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