Tour de Romandie 2025 Stage 5

May 4, 2025 The final stage of the Tour de Romandie is a 17KKM ITT through Genève. The riders see a 300M, 8% climb right in front of them in the start house. The start of the route is also quite technical and tight through town. They head out and back on straight roads on the banks of Lac Léman before hitting the turns once again towards the finish line. The intermediate time check at 11.5KM is at the top of a dragging hill that will require time trial specialist power to hold the momentum. The GC is incredibly tight at the top with only 3 seconds between Lenny Martinez, Lorenzo Fortunato, and João Almeida so the race overall is still up for grabs. The forecasted rain thankfully held off for all the riders and it would be a fair fight for the stage and the GC. Johan Price-Pejtersen of Alpecin-Deceuninck, who was the first to roll down the ramp and last in GC, set a very fast time and a strong early benchmark. Rémi Cavagna and Stefan Küng of Groupama-FDJ as well as Matthew Brennan of Visma-Lease a Bike each pushed the Dane's time but all of the came up just short within 2 seconds of the time. The first to exceed the speed of Price-Pejtersen was Thibault Guernalec of Arkéa-B&B Hotels who lowered the time by a full 4 seconds. All of the excitement around the early riders seemed ridiculous once Alberto Bettiol of XDS-Astana crossed the line. He smashed Guernalec's time by 16 seconds. Bettiol's time held as the GC riders started their efforts. Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quickstep, the Olympic and World ITT Champion, went through the Intermediate time split 11 seconds ahead of Bettiol and kept his power to the end to go in the lead by 18 seconds. In the battle for the overall, João Almeida of UAE-XRG went through Intermediate check 11 seconds down on Evenepoel and finished 12 seconds behind, provisionally second best. Lorenzo Fortunato of XDS-Astana was well out of the picture and finished the stage in 53rd, having lost 1 minute 35 seconds. By the time Lenny Martinez of Bahrain Victorious went through the time check, he had already lost the overall by 16 seconds. He was throwing the bike through every corner and did a good ITT relative to his previous performances but it was not enough to fend off Almeida. For the stage, Evenepoel won the day with a finishing speed of 49.927KM/HR. Almeida took second place with his teammate Jay Vine in third. Almeida won the GC 26 seconds ahead of Martinez who managed to keep second place by 15 seconds from Vine. Fortunato fell from second to fourth overall, 1 minute 22 seconds down on Almeida.