O Gran Camiño - The Historical Route 2025 Stage 1

February 26, 2025 After the terrible weather conditions the riders had to experience last year, they were granted beautiful sunshine to kick start the 2025 edition with a 189KM run from Maia to Matosinhos. After leaving Maia, a municipality of Porto, the riders take on a loop inland, through the hills, before coming back to the coast for a likely bunch finish. Six riders made the break of the day including Filippo Turconi of VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè, Ander Okamika of Burgo Burpellet BH, Artem Nych and Victor Martínez of Anicolor-Tien21, Mauricio Moreira of Efapel Cycling, and Pau Llaneras of Illes Balears Arabay. Uno-X Mobility, Soudal Quickstep, and Israel-Premier Tech were controlling the gap of only 2 minutes, still with 86KM to go. The bunch was a block with teams all lined out across the road with 50KM to go to get into position for the final categorized climb of the São Félix, 1.3KM long at 6.9%. The gap tumbled to just 30 seconds when the break hit the bottom and only Okamika, Nych, and Moreira were left in the breakaway by the top. More damage was done at the back of the peloton than the front and the majority of the bunch were together when they hit the flat roads again. The last of the break were caught with 40KM to go which spurred on more attacking from others. Alvaro Sagrado of Illes Balears Arabay got away on a technical section through a small village. Martin Marcellusi of VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè was next to go with Jan Castellon of Caja Rural Seguros RGA chasing as well. Castellon never made it but Marcellusi bridged up to Sagrado with just under 28KM to go and 1 minute 10 second lead on the bunch. Marcellusi attacked Sagrado as the gap was trimmed down to 15 seconds going into 10KM to go but the Italian's time out front would be short lived as he was caught just 4KM later. The fight for position was full on with 2KM to go. Polti-VisitMalta were all lined up on the left side of the road with Uno-X Mobility, Israel-Premier Tech, and Soudal Quickstep beside them. Polti-VisitMalta wound it up through 1KM to go and held control until 300M from the line when Magnus Cort of Uno-X Mobility launched his sprint. It was a long one but it caught the others off-guard. Santiago Mesa of Efapel Cycling was on his wheel and had the space to go around but did not have the legs. Cort held the speed to the line to take the win. Mesa took second with Giovanni Lonardi of Polti-VisitMalta in third.