Tour de Romandie 2025 Stage 1

April 30, 2025 Hopefully yesterday's Prologue got everyone warmed up because the opening road stage is very difficult. It's the longest day of the week at 194KM with 3,200M of elevation. The riders leave Münchenstein and grind upward through an Intermediate Sprint in Sorvilier to the main teeth of the stage. The climbs of Mont-Crosin, Col de Pontins, and Chaumont are all within 30KM of each other with Chaumont topping out at 76KM from the finish. They descend into a valley road and go through Salavaux and Murten along the banks of lakes Bienne, Neuchâtel, and Murtensee before a hard and technical finish. At 1600M from the line, there is a 1KM 7% climb which flattens off to the finish in Fribourg which makes timing the effort especially difficult. The weather could not have been more ideal for the start in Münchenstein. The flag dropped and five riders got up the road including Gerben Kuypers of Intermarché-Wanty, Ben Zwiehoff of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier of Lidl-Trek, Silvan Dillier of Alpecin-Deceuninck, and Enzo Paleni of Groupama-FDJ. They had a maximum advantage of 3 minutes 30 seconds but they started to fracture on the Col de Pontins and with 78KM to go at the base of Chaumont, only Kuypers and Zwiehoff remained in the front with 2 minutes 30 seconds on the peloton. Kuypers was dropped halfway up the 3KM climb but the pair joined up with an additional 30 seconds to play with as they started the run towards the Intermediate Sprint in Salavaux. EF-Education EasyPost and Visma-Lease a Bike led the bunch through the pastures and manicured fields of yellow canola up high before plunging down to the Lac de Bienne. Ineos added to the chase and with 41KM to go, the gap was brought all the way down to 50 seconds. The break was caught with 24KM to go and the drag racing began almost immediately. Ineos, Visma-Lease a Bike, Cofidis, and Lidl-Trek were taking up the width of the road but other teams were interested in getting involved as well. The road tipped down with 5KM to go forcing the speed up incredibly high through the outskirts of Fribourg. Soudal Quickstep kept the pace really high and the peloton were all strung out in one line with 2KM to go as they crossed over the Sarine river into the old town. Ineos took over with Geraint Thomas when the uphill drag started at 1600M and he continued to pull until the road flattened out with 500M to go. Arkéa-B&B Hotels took over and were really well positioned with two riders at the front but Matthew Brennan of Visma-Lease a Bike got a good jump early on everyone else at around 250M and held his lead to the line for his fourth victory in his first year as a professional. Behind, four riders were across the road with Aurélien Paret-Peintre of Decathlon AG2R taking second and Artem Shmidt of Ineos in third.