Tour de la Provence 2025 Stage 3

February 16, 2025 Stage 3 could go one of two ways. It could be an easy day in the saddle for a straightforward bunch sprint or it could be nervous, echelon racing and it all depends on the wind. The route is almost pan flat as it heads West from Rognac toward the open and exposed marshlands of the Camargue before coming back North to Arles. The roads are not particularly wide so if the wind does blow, very few would be sheltered. Most of the race turned out to be a relatively straightforward although extremely fast at over 48KM/HR average. A break of seven went up the road including Raúl García Pierna of Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Samuel Leroux of TotalEnergies, Daniel Årnes of Van Rysel Roubaix, Damien Girard of Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur, Cériel Desal of Wagner-Bazin WB, and Matisse Julien of CIC-U-Nantes. Lidl-Trek, Decathlon AG2R, EF-Education EasyPost, and Unibet Tietema Rockets all had riders pulling hard to bring the break back. Leroux, Årnes, Desal, and still had 15 seconds with 3KM to go and it wasn't until the 1KM banner that they were finally caught. Bahrain Victorious and Israel-Premier Tech set up their sprint trains side by side with all of the other printers fighting behind. Sam Bennett of Decathlon AG2R started his sprint from about 10th position with Marijn van den Berg of EF-Education EasyPost following. They quickly got passed Pascal Ackermann of Israel-Premier Tech who had started his sprint from the front. With 100M to go, Ackermann lost his handlebars after hitting a speed bump and came down very hard. A number of riders also crashed but Bennett and van den Berg were already ahead. Bennett held off the Dutchman to take his second win of the race. Van den Berg finished second with Alexander Konijn of Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur in third. In the GC, Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek and Matej Mohorič of Bahrain Victorious kept their places as first and second overall but van den Berg jumped five positions with the bonus seconds to end in third overall.