Tour of Oman 2025 Stage 5

February 12, 2025 The final day of the race goes to Green Mountain (Jabal al Akhdar) and should be hard enough to turn the GC around. It is a hockey stick stage with the only real difficulty coming on the last 6KM up Green Mountain to the finish line. The climb is in the same range as Eastern Mountain which the riders took on for Stage 3 so the profiles are similar, albeit longer for Green Mountain. It is 6KM long at an average of almost 10%. There are flat sections on the climb which leads into steep parts of over 15% so pacing will be crucial for the stage win and the GC. There was a much bigger fight for the break than in previous days. Visma-Lease a Bike were very aggressive as were Picnic-PostNL. A large group of around 20 riders got away with 128KM to go but Q36.5 and UAE-XRG were not happy and organized a strong chase behind. Their gap was held closely and break only had 1 minute with 85KM to go. The break continued to work well and had extended their advantage to 2 minutes 15 seconds with 29KM to go. JCL Team UKYO did a ton of chasing, and with UAE-XRG, the gap was down to just 1 minute 5 seconds with 20KM remaining. 5KM later, Pepijn Reinderink of Soudal Quickstep and Orluis Aular of Movistar got clear of the break but were caught just before an Intermediate Sprint through Birkat al Mouz. The break split up inside 10KM to go as the road began to start its drag up to the line. Mauri Vansevenant of Soudal Quickstep and José Luis Faura of Burgo Burpellet BH were the most aggressive from the break in the first few kilometers of Green Mountain. They would be joined by Lucas Eriksson of Tudor Pro Cycling but the UAE-XRG led peloton were in the same camera shot with 4KM to go. The leading trio were caught with 3.5KM to go. Jay Vine of UAE-XRG did a lot of the pulling on the climb and had reduced the group to just the GC favorites and a handful of teammates. Just passed 2KM to go, the road got really steep up a right hand corner and the only riders left at the front were Vine and his leader Adam Yates, race leader David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ, and Valentin Paret-Peintre of Soudal Quickstep. Vine pulled off and let Yates take over. Gaudu was dropped but he kept his pace to keep the gap from expanding too quickly. Paret-Peintre put in a dig with 1.5KM to go and got a gap on Yates but he kept his pace in ITT mode and clawed Paret-Peintre back. Gaudu also came back to make three at the front once again. Yates picked up the effort with 700M to go which sent Gaudu out the back for good. Paret-Peintre matched Yates pedal rev for pedal rev until 120M to go when he attacked. Yates did not try to jump with Paret-Peintre and conceded the stage win but he did keep the pressure on to make sure the GC was locked down. Valentin Paret-Peintre took his first win for Soudal Quickstep with Yates 2 seconds back. Gaudu lost 45 seconds in the last 500M but did enough to secure third on the stage. The GC matched the stage results with Yates taking top honors 6 seconds ahead of Valentin Paret-Peintre and 39 seconds ahead of David Gaudu.