Critérium du Dauphiné 2025 Stage 1

June 8, 2025 The final preparation for the Tour de France begins in Domérat for Stage 1 of the Critérium du Dauphiné. At 195KM, the profile looks fairly gentle but the riders will accumulate nearly 2,300M of elevation across seven category 4 climbs. There is a 32KM circuit that the riders enter with 77KM to go and will be taken on two and half times. It contains two climbs, the Côte de Buffon which 600M at just under 9% and the Côte de Domérat, 1.8KM at 3.7%. The Côte de Buffon is ridden three times, the last of which comes 6KM before the finish. The bunch started the day under overcast skies but there was no rain in the forecast and the weather was warm. Paul Ourselin of Cofidis and Pierre Thierry of Arkéa-B&B Hotels went up the road and had a maximum gap of 3 minutes but as they entered the circuit, it was trimmed back down to just 1 minute 15 seconds as Israel-Premier Tech and Lidl-Trek were chasing for their sprinters. Ourselin won the sprint at the top of the Côte de Buffon which was lined with spectators out on a Sunday afternoon. UAE-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike made the bunch nervous by fighting for each corner which made the pace unnecessarily high. With 60KM to go, the gap was down to 45 seconds and the road was blocked with teams drag racing in color order. Ourselin took the points on top of the Côte de Domérat with 55.5KM to go which was enough to guarantee that he would wear the jersey tomorrow. He promptly sat up, leaving Thierry to go off alone. A calm set over the bunch and the gap extended back out to 1 minute. The first moves from the peloton came from EF-Education EasyPost on the second of three ascents up the Côte de Buffon. Archie Ryan went on the attack and was swiftly reeled in by Tadej Pogačar of UAE-XRG with Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike right behind. Other attacks came but when Fred Wright of Bahrain Victorious got clear, the bunch settled and the Brit was quickly across to Thierry. Wright and Thierry took the bell with a 35 second advantage but the peloton were just taking a breath before the hostilities kicked off again. Thierry led over the Côte de Domérat and sat up, leaving Wright alone at the front. The gap was down to 20 seconds with momentum and nerves building in the bunch. Lidl-Trek took control and tried to set a pace that would discourage attacks but Visma-Lease a Bike and Alpecin-Deceuninck were queueing up on either side. The fight for position coming into the base of the Côte de Buffon was furious with Visma-Lease a Bike winning the battle. Wright was caught halfway up the climb when Axel Laurance of Ineos put in a hard attack but it was matched by the most of the peloton. Lukas Nerurkar of EF-Education EasyPost counter attacked over the top but the race was sewn back together by Matteo Jorgenson of Visma-Lease a Bike. With 5.5KM to go, Vingegaard made an uncharacteristic attack that drew out Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel of Alpecin-Deceuninck and Santiago Buitrago of Bahrain Victorious. Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quickstep had to time trial his way across but just made it. With 2KM to go, the gap was just 4 seconds but the leaders all worked surprisingly well and held the gap into 500M to go. At 300M, van der Poel started the sprint with the peloton just 20M behind. Pogačar timed his sprint to perfection and came around van der Poel in the last 50M to take the win ahead of Vingegaard with van der Poel in third. On the results sheet, it looks like Pogačar and Vingegaard were 1-2 in a bunch sprint because there were no recorded time gaps between them and the peloton. Jake Stewart of Israel-Premier Tech was best paced from the peloton, finishing in fifth place.