La Route d'Occitanie - CIC 2025 Stage 2

June 19, 2025 The opening road stage is a bit of a shark's tooth profile that runs West for 195KM from Gignac Vallée de L'Herault to Carmaux Ségala in the Department of the Tarn. The 7KM Col du Vent starts from kilometer 0 and over the next 130KM, there are two other categorized climbs, the Col du Notre Dame and the Côte de Requista. From the top of the Côte de Requista with 66KM to go, the elevation gently drops down until the riders pass through the finish line in Carmaux in the opposite direction for a 20KM loop that brings them back around into Carmaux for the finish. Southern France is getting a heat wave at the moment and the race started under temperatures of 35C (95F). A break of five got up the road including Alex Díaz of Caja Rural-Seguros RGA, Victor Papon of Wagner-Bazin WB, Pablo García of Polti-VisitMalta, Lenaic Langella of CIC-U Nantes, and Felipe Toro of Sistecredito. They had 4 minutes 35 seconds on the peloton with 90KM to race as they were heading toward an Intermediate Sprint in Brousse-le-Château. Arkéa-B&B Hotels were doing the chasing in the peloton and EF-Education EasyPost had just come up to lend a hand in hopes the finish would come down to a sprint. The sun continued to beat down as the riders crossed the Tarn river over a beautiful stone arched bridge with 71.5KM to go and immediately started the ascent of the Côte de Requista (5KM at 6.4%) with a gap of 3 minutes 35 seconds. Toro was dropped from the break and a few moments later with a little over 1KM to climb, a rider from Unibet-Tietema Rockets attacked from the peloton and kicked off a wave of counter attacks. Lorenzo Germani of Groupama-FDJ was the first to get away but it was right near the top of the climb and he was brought back by Arkéa-B&B Hotels. The bunch settled down over the top and the race resumed its previous state of Arkéa-B&B Hotels chasing the now four leaders at a gap of 2 minutes 15 seconds. In the feed zone with 66KM to go, there multiple crashes that seemed to happen at the same time which brought down a number of riders including Germani. All of those held up got back on but with the momentary slow down, the break were able to pull out another 30 seconds. The heat started to take its toll on the riders up front and with 41KM to go, Langella had to pull the pin but he gathered up the mountains points during the day and will wear the jersey tomorrow. More teams with sprint options came to the front with 40KM to go including Decathlon AG2R and TotalEnergies. 20KM later as the break went through the finish line to take on the final circuit, the peloton had closed down to just 30 seconds. They were finally caught on an unclassified climb with about 15KM to go and a few riders tried to counter attack but the bigger teams wanted a sprint and stitched the move back each time. Inside the last 5KM, Decathlon AG2R was the primary team driving the pace. Groupama-FDJ and St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 were also pushing up with numbers. From 2 to 1 KM to go, the race was in one long line. Groupama-FDJ led through 1KM to go with Germani then Thibaud Gruel but with 300M to go, a rush from Andrea Vendrame of Decathlon AG2R brought Dorian Godon forward. Marijn van den Berg of EF-Education EasyPost had positioned himself in between them and just outside of 200M, van den Berg opened up and held off everyone else in a difficult 1% dragging finish. Godon had to sit down with 20M to go but he managed to finish in second place with Sandy Dujardin of TotalEnergies in third.