Tour de Romandie 2025 Stage 3

May 2, 2025 Stage 3 could be a hard one to control. There are a series of laps around Cossonay with plenty of up and down including the climb to the finish line which is 2.2KM long at 5.7% and is taken on three occasions. After going through the town of Moiry with 61KM to go, the route breaks out of the lap to climb the 14KM Col de Mollendruz which averages 3.5%. They plunge downhill through two Intermediate Sprints in Mollens and Apples before taking on the Cossonay climb for the third time to the finish line. Three strong men made the break to spend the day up the road for another gloriously warm stage. Stefan Küng of Groupama-FDJ, Huub Artz of Intermarché-Wanty, and Bauke Mollema of Lidl-Trek had a maximum advantage of 5 minutes 30 seconds but with 64KM to go, their lead had been pared back to 4 minutes with the Col de Mollendruz up in front of them. EF-Education EasyPost were doing much of the chasing with race leader Alex Baudin in their midst but Picnic-PostNL, Lotto, and Bahrain Victorious were also interested in working. The gap had come down to 2 minutes 40 seconds and Küng attacked. Artz got on terms but Küng hit him again and was solo with 47.5KM to go. Küng went over the top at 40KM to the finish with a slightly longer advantage of 2 minutes 5 seconds. The peloton was nearly all intact and on the roads back to Cossonay, Küng was slowly reeled in and eventually caught with 11KM to go. Team drag racing started and it was frantic between 5 and 3KM to go as they went downhill into town on the approach to the finishing climb. Soudal Quickstep had control on the climb until 1700M when Movistar took over. Just outside of 1KM to go, the pace went out momentarily and Jay Vine of UAE-XRG attacked. Decathlon AG2R were pulling but no one was able to close the gap on Vine who put a hand in the air in victory. Lenny Martinez of Bahrain Victorious was best of the rest, leading in the group 2 seconds down on Vine with Vine's teammate, João Almeida, in third. There were no changes in the top 5 GC spots but Almeida and Vine each moved up one spot courtesy of the bonus seconds they received at the finish.