Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkiye 2025 Stage 6

May 2, 2025 The sprinters missed their opportunity with the cancellation of yesterday's stage and will have to wait another day because today is a GC day. There are only three climbs on the looping route around Selçuk but two of them come in the last 18KM. The first climb heads towards Şirince and averages 8% over 3.6KM. A short descent takes them into Selçuk where they start the traditional climb to the House of the Virgin Mary and the finish line, a climb of 4KM at 8.5%. It is a much punchier finish than in Stage 4 but should see time gaps nonetheless. The weather has certainly improved over the last two days and it prompted a number of riders to get up the road for a day in the break. Five riders made it in the move including Baptiste Veistroffer of Lotto, José Luis Faura of Burgos-Burpellet BH, Tommaso Nencini of Solution Tech-Vini Fantini, Oliver Mattheis of BIKE AID, and Tuur Dens of Flanders-Baloise. Dens was dropped on the first categorized climb halfway through the stage leaving four out front with a gap of 1 minute 20 seconds at 46KM to go. Wind was blowing across the the riders and the peloton split in pieces on the plains heading towards the climb to Şirince. Jon Agirre of Euskatel-Euskadi looked to be the main GC rider that missed out, starting the day seventh overall at just over 1 minute down. The break was caught with 27KM to go but the Agirre group was still 1 minute behind and chasing hard. Picnic-PostNL set a hard pace on the penultimate climb that sent many riders out the back. Fourth place overall, Frank van den Broek of Picnic-PostNL, went on the attack 1.5KM from the top. Race leader Wout Poels of XDS-Astana was sitting pretty far back in the group but managed to make the first split of 8 riders. A few more riders got on and a total of 14 went over the top together at 15KM to go. Around 20 riders were at the front by the bottom of the descent in Selçuk. With 8KM to go, a dog ran on course but thankfully it darted into the crowd and off the road without incident. Jakub Otruba of Caja Rural Seguros RGA attacked through town with no reaction from the group and started the final climb with a 26 second gap. The gap held firm until 2.6KM to go when Uno-X Mobility went to the front. 15 seconds came off very quickly but it was a move from Giovanni Carboni of Unibet-Tietema Rockets that finally closed down Otruba at 1.5KM to go. Otruba was dropped immediately leaving Carboni alone at the front but the group behind was not settled. Harold Martín López of XDS-Astana attacked and went right passed Carboni but Poels looked to have eyes on keeping the GC and seemed to chase down López. López made it across the line for the win with Poels crossing just 3 seconds later for another 1-2 from XDS-Astana this week. Johannes Kulset of Uno-X Mobility took third place 11 seconds down. The GC podium remains the same with Poel leading 16 seconds ahead of López and 58 seconds on Guillermo Juan Martinez of Picnic-PostNL. Anything can happen in bike racing but the remaining two stages do not seem hard enough to shake up the GC in any meaningful way so we could be seeing the final GC podium as set.