Itzulia Basque Country 2025 Stage 2

April 8, 2025 Today is by no means an easy day but it does provide the best opportunity in the race for a sprint finish. The run from Pamplona-Iruña to Lodosa is 186KM with 2,000M of climbing. The only categorized climb comes after 48KM of racing but the main obstacle for the sprinters may be an uphill that ends 18KM from the finish which is 2.4KM long at just over 4%. If they can stay in the bunch over that, we should have a sprint finish. There was bountiful sunshine and warm weather, 22C (72F), for the riders as they set off. Julen Arriola-Bengoa of Caja-Rural Seguros RGA, Tobias Bayer of Alpecin-Deceuninck, Xabier Isasa of Euskatel-Euskadi, Diego Uriarte of Equipo Kern Pharma, and Sinuhé Fernández of Burgos-Burpellet BH made up the break of the day but their lead was just 1 minute 50 seconds with 78KM to go with Ineos and Soudal Quickstep were doing the chasing. They rolled on through open green fields and rock escarpments, not the typical scenes of what we think of when the Basque Country comes to mind. Next to nothing happened for the next 50KM but the speed did pick up with 26KM to go on the approach to the short uncategorized climb. The road was wide which gave plenty of space for sprint and GC teams alike to move up to a better position in the bunch. The peloton started the climb with 20KM to go, 50 seconds behind the break. Mauro Schmid of Jayco AlUla attacked near the bottom which pulled the front 30 riders out in one long line. The elastic did not snap but he continued the effort to put the pure sprinters in as much trouble as he could. They got to the top all together and continued on the plateau but no big efforts were made to reorganize the chase which allowed the break to pull out a 25 second advantage. The break split up with 5.5KM to go when Isasa attacked. The road to the finish was a straight highway and the bunch was getting set up for a sprint. Isasa was caught just under 2KM to go by Ineos and Groupama-FDJ who were lined up for their lead outs. Intermarché-Wanty took over with 600M to go and led through the final corner, a gentle left with 200M to go. Tom Paquot of Intermarché-Wanty was in front, leading out his teammate Luca Van Boven with Caleb Ewan of Ineos in third wheel. Ewan started his sprint out of the corner on the inside as Paquot pulled off. He was quickly passed Van Boven and took the win by a few bike lengths, his second in just two weeks. Van Boven took second place with Bastien Tronchon of Decathlon AG2R in third.