Tour of Oman 2025 Stage 3

February 10, 2025 Stage 3 is another GC day, this time taking on Eastern Mountain. The climb to the finish line is 4.7KM at almost 8% average but the last 1.5KM is consistently over 10% with ramps of 15%. Andreas Miltiadis of Roojai Insurance, Mohammed Al-Wahibi and Said Alrahbi of the Oman National Team, Rayan Boulahoite of TotalEnergies, Nur Amirul Fakhruddin Mazuki of Terengganu Cycling, and Nicolas Vinokurov of XDS-Astana made the early break of the day. It was easy in the wheels all day until the approach to climb. With 7KM to go, Vinokurov was the last man remaining and he had 2 minutes on the bunch. The peloton were wide across the road with teams trying to maintain or gain an advantage in positioning. The bunch hit the bottom of Eastern Mountain like it was a sprint finish and swept up Vinokurov. After doing a hard pull for his teammate, race leader Louis Vervaeke of Soudal Quickstep was dropped and Groupama-FDJ took over. Under the 1KM to go banner, David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ put in his first dig. The group was whittled down to 10 riders and he went again. With 500M to go, Adam Yates of UAE-XRG let a little gap open to Gaudu. Gaudu saw the opportunity and accelerated in the saddle. Only Yates was able to get back on terms. It was down to just Gaudu and Yates in the last 150M. It looked like Yates was going to be able get around Gaudu in the sprint but the Frenchman kicked again and took the victory with a 1 second gap in front of Yates. Behind, Damien Howson of Q36.5 attacked the remnants of the GC riders and came in 5 seconds after Gaudu. In the GC, Gaudu now leads by 6 seconds to Yates and 12 seconds to Howson with a sprint day tomorrow and a final difficult day to the Green Mountain to follow.