Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkiye 2025 Stage 3

April 29, 2025 The race continues it's journey following the coast West and now moving Northward for Stage 3 from the marina in Fethiye to Marmaris. It's a punchy day with eleven short climbs that add up to 2,500M of elevation across the 176KM. The final climb is taken on twice, once at 55KM to go before passing through the finish line for a large lap. They hit the climb again and start the descent into the finish with just 8KM to go. The climb is 3.1KM long 6.6% and could be hard enough for a small group to split off and stay away to the finish. A break of seven got away including Vadim Pronskiy of Terengganu, Konrad Czabok of Mazowsze Serce Polski, Willie Smit of China Glory-Mentech, Even Yemane of Istanbul Büyükșehir Belediye Spor Türkiye, the Turkish National Road Champion Doğukan Arikan and Mustafa Tekin of Spor Toto, and Burak Abay of Konya Büyükşehir Belediye Spor. They had 2 minutes 15 seconds with 70KM to go as Alpecin-Deceuninck were controlling as the leaders of the GC. The riders got a chance to look at the final climb on the first passage. Like the other climbs so far in the race, it is a wide highway with the ability to move up at will. Near the top, everyone in the break went for the mountains points and it was Abay that got there first after a very long sprint. Abay started the descent, which was as wide as the ascent, with the rest of the break spread 15-20 seconds down the road behind. They rejoined 2KM before the Treasures of Turkiye Sprint Prime and, with Smit in the group who is the leader of the competition, the cohesion broke down. Pronskiy chipped off and took the points as Smit was marked out of the sprint by the other riders. The peloton rolled through the finish line 50 seconds later with Flanders-Baloise and Unibet-Tietema Rockets leading the way. The break was caught with 44.5KM to go as they continued to hug the stunning coastline where the mountains meet the sea, passed Keci Island. The pace really went up as the bunch headed towards a 1.8KM long 10% climb. Alpecin-Deceuninck led on the early slopes but Unibet-Tietema Rockets went to the front and rode hard to split the group. By the top, about 50 riders were left but groups started to come back on the descent. Jonas Geens of Flanders-Baloise and Victor Vaneeckhoutte of Lotto got away after the descent with 26KM remaining on rolling roads as the peloton were assessing who was still in the group. A number of counter attacks went on an uncategorized climb but the peloton was still together with the two leaders at 10 seconds ahead as they started the descent which leads back into the final climb of the day. Geens was dropped on the descent as a bit of rain started to fall but the pair joined back up with 10KM to go and had 28 seconds to a sizable peloton of around 70 riders. The two leaders were caught as Polti-VisitMalta set a controlled pace on the final climb. The pace did not discourage attacking however as a number of riders tried to get away but the majority of the peloton went over the top with 8KM to go. The bunch came into the streets of Marmaris with Polti-VisitMalta on the front under 1KM to go. They led out Giovanni Lonardi who was able to sit in until just outside of 200M. A rush came from behind and Lonardi was side by side with three other riders as they hit the line. The quickest however was Lev Gonov of XDS-Astana who was promoted to the elite team for this race and paid the team back handsomely. Lander Loockx of Unibet-Tietema Rockets was second with race leader Tibor Del Grosso of Alpecin-Deceuninck in third and Lonardi in fourth.