Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkiye 2025 Stage 1

April 27, 2025 The 60th edition of the Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkiye gets underway with Stage 1 which will undoubtably go to the sprinters. At just 132KM on a circuit around Antalya, there is almost no elevation to speak of. A group of 8 riders got away very quickly including Jon Agirre of Euskatel-Euskadi, Filippo Ridolfo of Novo Nordisk, Muhammad Nur Aiman Mohd Zariff of Terengganu Cycling, Konrad Czabok of Mazowsze Serce Polski, Willie Smit of China Glory-Mentech, Vinzent Dorn of BIKE AID, Arda Tekirdag of Istanbul Büyükșehir Belediye Spor Türkiye, Ahmet Örken of Spor Toto, and Yunus Emre Yılmaz of Konya Büyükşehir Belediye Spor. Uno-X Mobility, Picnic-PostNL, and Lotto kept them on a tight leash, never having much more than 1 minute. With 53KM to go, Flanders-Baloise tried to put the race into echelons but the wind was not strong enough and they shut the attack down. The gap came down to 40 seconds as they entered the urban center of Serik but, with a Treasures of Turkiye Sprint Prime up for grabs, the break would not be denied a chance at those points. They started playing around and skipping pulls which allowed Smit to attack 900M from the line and held off the others to take the points. With 28KM to go, a crash on a dusty left turn took down a few riders including Casper Van Uden of Picnic-PostNL who is one of the favorites for the sprint finish. He was able to get back up and rolling and make it into the bunch a few kilometers later. Ridolfo and Dorn broke clear of the rest of the break with 21KM to go but they were finally reeled back in with 15KM remaining. Teams got into color order with 11KM to go for the drag race through the beach resorts of Antalya. The final few kilometers were all on wide, three lane roads which made it easy to move up but almost impossible to hold position, especially given that the day has been so easy. Uno-X Mobility had control through 1500M to go but it was Picnic-PostNL and Alpecin-Deceuninck who took the final right corner with 1100M to go in the lead. A crash took down two riders which disrupted the lead outs but a Polti-VisitMalta rider kept the pace up. With around 500M to go, Jonas Rickaert of Alpecin-Deceuninck came with a run of speed with his teammate Simon Dehairs in the wheel. It looked like Dehairs would have it his own way when he started his sprint but Matteo Malucelli of XDS-Astana came off the wheel and the pair were neck and neck on the line. It was a well-timed bike throw by Dehairs that gave him the edge and the victory. Jules Hesters of Flanders-Baloise took third place just behind Malucelli.