Santos Tour Down Under 2025 Stage 6

January 26, 2025 90KM is all that's left of the Tour Down Under for 2025. It will be a quick 90KM as the riders take on 4.5KM circuits around Adelaide. The GC may be sealed but the Sprint Jersey and a stage win is still to play for. The race got under way with a standing start but they got up to speed quickly. Casper Pedersen of Soudal Quickstep, Damien Howson of the Australian National Team and Kelland O'Brien of Jayco AlUla got off the front right away but the peloton was still active. A chase organized by Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe and UAE-XRG kept the gap between 30 and 45 seconds but with 33KM to go Oscar Onley of Picnic-PostNL tried to get out of the peloton but that was a difficult task given the natural momentum of the bunch. He was pulled back quickly but it did bring the gap down to just 15 seconds. The complexion of the race changed when they hit 10KM to go. Sprint teams were jockeying for each corner with the wheel of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe's Sam Welsford being hot property for others to tag on to. Pedersen was the last man standing and got the bell for the last lap with a gap of just 10 seconds. Ineos did another good job with controlling the front and they caught Pedersen with 2.5KM to go. A crash at the front with 1.3KM to go on a tight right took down about 10 riders, including most of the Groupama-FDJ train, and left only about 20 in contention. Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe put on the perfect lead out and delivered Welsford to his third victory. Bryan Coquard of Cofidis and Phil Bauhaus of Bahrain-Victorious took the final corner in second and third wheel behind Welsford and they stayed in that position across the line.