Baloise Belgium Tour 2025 Stage 2

June 19, 2025 Another pan flat day should result in a bunch sprint. The race from Beringen, near the Heusden-Zolder motor racing circuit, to Putte is 194KM with only 500M of elevation the entire day. It is only 55KM as the crow flies between the two towns but a series of laps, 25KM each, with five passages of the finish line, make up the rest of the kilometers. There are the Golden Kilometer sprints with 21KM to go and on each lap is the Peulibaan cobbled segment which is just a few hundred meters long, with the last time coming 7KM before the finish. The race got underway under a cloudless sky. Plenty of ice and bottles were needed to keep cool but that didn't put off six riders from going up the road to form the break of the day. The group included Alex Colman of Flanders-Baloise, Luca De Meester of Wagner-Bazin WB, Maarten Verheyen of Baloise-Glowi Lions, Kenay De Moyer of Pauwels Sauzen-Cibel Clementines, Marijn Maas of BEAT Cycling, and Casper van der Woude of Metec-SOLARWATT-Mantel. They had 2 minutes 15 seconds with 70KM to go as they were approaching the last Super8 checkpoint sprint of the day. De Moyer won the sprint which was likely the last prize the break would contest because Soudal Quickstep and Alpecin-Deceuninck each had a man chasing with the entire Ineos team queueing up behind them. A split formed on the Peulibaan with 56KM and Lidl-Trek piled on the pressure afterwards with Alpecin-Deceuninck. About 2/3 of the bunch were stuck behind including Juan Sebastián Molano of UAE-XRG, Casper van Uden of Picnic-PostNL, and Ethan Vernon of Israel-Premier Tech. As they passed through the finish line with 2 laps to go, the break had just 30 seconds on the first chase group with the next group a further 18 seconds back. At 46KM to go, the break was caught. 2KM later, the peloton was all together but it wasn't long before counter attacks started flying. Olivier Godfroid of Baloise-Glowi Lions and Axel van der Tuuk of Metec-SOLARWATT-Mantel went off together and got a lead of 13 seconds but the peloton changed gear with the Peulibaan approaching for the penultimate time. Uno-X Mobility led into the sector and back out without much drama. Wessel Mouris of Unibet-Tietema Rockets attacked from the bunch and was quickly across to the leaders. Jens Reynders of Wagner-Bazin was next to go but he couldn't close the gap and was reabsorbed into the bunch. When the three leaders took the bell for the final 25KM lap, they had 35 seconds on the peloton. They swept up all of the bonus seconds in the Golden Kilometer and managed to increase the gap out to 50 seconds. Soudal Quickstep came up and started pulling hard with 20KM to go. The chase became a mad rush with Movistar, Lidl-Trek, Israel-Premier Tech, UAE-XRG, Lotto, and Uno-X Mobility all drag racing at the front. The situation calmed down a few kilometers later with the big teams all blocking the road. At 11KM to go, Oscar Riesebeek of Alpecin-Deceuninck was desperate to move up. He sprinted up the separated bike path, hopped back onto the road, and crossed in front of the bunch to get over to his team. A number of riders called him out for the maneuver which resulted in a yellow card. Uno-X Mobility led the peloton once again as they went onto Peulibaan with 7KM to go. Just off the cobbles, the break were caught and Rasmus Tiller drilled it, creating splits throughout the bunch. Ådne Holter of Uno-X Mobility attacked with 4.3KM to go. The front group was down to around 45 riders with a larger peloton about 20 seconds behind. The two large groups came back together and it was UAE-XRG who put in the effort to catch Holter with 1800M to go. Dries Van Gestel of Soudal Quickstep led the bunch through the last corner with 700M to go but his sprinter, Tim Merlier, was out of position and nowhere in sight. Florian Vermeersch took it back up for UAE-XRG with Rui Oliveira and Juan Sebastián Molano on his wheel. Molano kicked with 200M to go and held the barriers on his right side. Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Deceuninck found a gap out to the left and when he hit clean air, he accelerated and took the win by half a bike length to Molano. Jenno Berckmoes of Lotto took third place by a hair from Tim Torn Teutenberg of Lidl-Trek who was coming up fast. With Molano's consistency in the sprints, he takes hold of the overall by 1 second to Philipsen and 2 seconds to Merlier.