Tour of the Alps 2025 Stage 3

April 23, 2025 There is far less climbing today than yesterday but the race may be more selective with a harder climb coming near the finish. Starting in yesterday's finish town of Sterzing, the race heads out for over 50KM on valley roads before the climbing begins. The first categorized climb of the Furkelpass tops out 54KM from the finish. It is 7.7KM at over 7% and around 1,700M in elevation. After the descent into Olang, there is another valley road which takes the riders all the way to 17KM to go when they hit the Vierschachberg, a 6KM climb at 7%. There is another little climb before the true descent starts which takes the riders to the finish in Innichen after 145KM and 3,000M of climbing. A big group went after a long fight to get into the break. 21 riders in total got away but with 55KM to go and 1KM to the top of the Furkelpass, it was Marco Frigo of Israel-Premier Tech leading 1 minute 30 seconds ahead of a chase group of 10. The chase was comprised of Finlay Pickering of Bahrain Victorious, Chris Hamilton of Picnic-PostNL, Frederik Wandahl and Lennart Jasch of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Andrew August of Ineos, Nicolas Prodhomme of Decathlon AG2R, Hugh Carthy of EF-Education EasyPost, Florian Stork of Tudor Pro Cycling, Manuele Tarozzi of VF-Group Bardiani CSF-Faizanè, and Simone Raccani of JCL Team UKYO. With Stork up the road, Tudor Pro Cycling did not have to ride in the peloton for race leader Michael Storer which forced Lidl-Trek to manage the group. The peloton was down to about 25 riders and they were 2 minutes 30 seconds back as Frigo started the descent. By the valley road, the chase group split and only Pickering, August, and Wandahl. Frigo had 1 minute 20 seconds to the three chasers but was down to 2 minutes on the peloton. Tudor Pro Cycling started to ride in the peloton but it didn't seem like they wanted to control for the stage. The gap to Frigo expanded and when he went through the finish line with 21KM to go to head out towards the Vierschachberg, he had 2 minutes on the three chasers and 4 minutes on the peloton. Tudor Pro Cycling continued to lead up the start of the climb. Matthew Riccitello of Israel-Premier Tech and Davide Piganzoli of Polti-VisitMalta attacked with 3.5KM to climb and soon Riccitello was off alone on his way up to the three chasers after Piganzoli was dropped. Riccitello reached August, Pickering, and Wandahl with about 1.5KM to climb and sat on for a bit but attacked again and was clear to try and put as much time into the other GC riders as possible. Behind, Decathlon AG2R kept the group under control. A few attacks went near the top of the climb but the GC favorites were more or less together as they started the initial descent. Frigo hit the small climb with 8.5KM to go before the full descent with 1 minute on Riccitello and 1 minute 40 seconds on the favorites group. The peloton carried a lot of speed over the small climb and caught Riccitello just before the proper descent began. Frigo started the 2.5KM flat run to the finish with just over 40 seconds which was enough for him to take his first professional victory, an incredible solo effort of nearly 60KM. Jai Hindley of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe took the sprint for second ahead of Derek Gee of Israel-Premier Tech. The GC remained largely unchanged with the exception of Hindely moving up from sixth to fourth due to his 6 bonus seconds in the sprint and Guilio Ciccone swapping third for second with Paul Seixas on countback but still locked on the same time.