Ethias-Tour de Wallonie 2025 Stage 3

7/28/2025 Today should be one for the more pure sprinters as the route is the flattest of any this week with just 800M of elevation across the 165KM route. The race starts in Estinnes just outside of Binche. The course hugs the French border as the race moves North through Dour and Peruwelz. The riders enter a circuit with 72KM to go and cross the finish line in Antoing for the first of three times for two full 25KM laps. There is not much on the circuit but there are at least seven major changes of direction that the riders will have to be attentive to. Only three riders were interested in spending their day dangling in front of the peloton. Those riders were Henri-François Renard-Haquin of Wagner-Bazin WB, Eddy Le Huitouze of Groupama-FDJ, and Rasmus Bøgh Wallin of Uno-X Mobility. They got about 5 minutes at one point but that was almost halved with 75KM to go. The race remained quite static with Israel-Premier Tech chasing. The break passed through the finish line for 2 laps of the circuit to go with a gap now down to 90 seconds. 10KM later, Wallin and Renard-Haquin had a moment of frustration with each other and a gap to Le Huitouze formed. Renard-Haquin jumped away from Wallin and bridged up to Le Huitouze but Wallin looked cooked and fell out of the break. The pattern of the race continued with the bunch slowly chipping away at the break's lead. When they reached one lap to go, the gap was down to 40 seconds with Lidl-Trek, Israel-Premier Tech, and Movistar massing at the front. Le Huitouze and Renard-Haquin were caught with 21KM to go and it looked like Israel-Premier Tech and Lidl-Trek were intent on keeping a lid on any attacks by riding a strong pace to get a bunch sprint. Teams formed sprint trains with 19KM to go to grab the bonus seconds on offer at the final intermediate sprint. Ineos and Lidl-Trek were well positioned and it was Lidl-Trek's Mathias Vacek that got the 3 bonus seconds. The race was blown apart due to the pace of the intermediate sprint and 12 riders formed a split off the front with Bahrain Victorious chasing behind. Race leader Oliver Knight of Cofidis missed the split but Corbin Strong of Israel-Premier Tech was present and pushing on. Rasmus Tiller of Uno-X Mobility saw the danger and made an impressive solo effort to try and bridge up to the front group. He got within 50M but couldn't do more and sat up to filter back into the chase group. The gap hung around 15 seconds but the gap was closing in to 10 seconds with 2KM to go. The front group lost cohesion and, with 1,500M to go, Fabio Van den Bossche of Alpecin-Deceuninck sent a flyer with Brandon Rivera of Ineos on the wheel. It looked like a perfect move but the peloton was charging and caught both the Strong group and then Van den Bossche and Rivera with just 250M to go. The sprint was absolutely chaotic. There were no lead outs and with Rivera and Van den Bossche coming back into the group, riders had to dive around them to continue their sprint. A crash took down riders 100M from the line but that did not bother Davide Donati of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe who sped to victory. The 20 year old is currently riding for the Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe development team and was called up to the World Tour team for this race and took the opportunity with open arms. Milan Fretin of Cofidis made his way through the carnage for second place, just in front of Anders Foldager of Jayco AlUla in third. Knight and Strong remain separated by 1 second but Foldager moves to third overall at 2 seconds down as a result of the bonus seconds at the finish.