Ethias-Tour de Wallonie 2025 Stage 5

7/30/2025 The final stage of the Tour de Wallonie is very testing with hardly any flat road on a route that covers 183KM and over 3,000M of elevation. There are four distinct loops that the riders will complete after they set off from Bertrix in the far South of Belgium and West along the French border before looping back around to the finish in Bertrix. There are eight categorized climbs and numerous others along the way. Like yesterday, the three intermediate sprints all come in the final 50KM of the stage so Corbin Strong and Mathias Vacek will have to be attentive right to the end if they want to win the general classification. The weather was marginally better than yesterday but there were still spots on the course getting some rain. A much larger break got away today than any other stage this week with 12 riders. The group contained Matevž Govekar of Bahrain Victorious, Clément Izquierdo of Cofidis, Olivier Le Gac and Rémy Rochas of Groupama-FDJ, Ben Swift of Ineos, Lorenzo Milesi of Movistar, Filip Maciejuk of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Baptiste Veistroffer of Lotto, Siebe Deweirdt of Flanders-Baloise, Henri-François Renard-Haquin of Wagner-Bazin WB, Gianni Marchand of Tarteletto-Isorex, and David Haverdings of Baloise-Glowi Lions. With 85KM to go, Israel-Premier Tech had the break controlled at 4 minutes 35 seconds. At this point, Milesi was sitting in the virtual GC lead by around 2 minutes. Jayco AlUla and Intermarché-Wanty added men to the chase and brought the gap down by 1 minute with 68KM to go on the approach to Voie du Terme, the seventh of eight classified climbs. The gap was under 2 minutes 30 seconds with 54KM to go and Izquierdo jumped from the break to get out of the large group. Izquierdo was reeled back in but the move seemed to get the break rolling through and off a bit more smoothly. Even with the increased cooperation, they crossed the finish line for the first of three times, the third being the finish, with a 1 minute 40 second lead and 45KM still to go. Next time through the finish at 22KM to go, Deweirdt attacked the break who were otherwise still together. The peloton continued tapping out their pace and slowly reeling them back to within 1 minute. Deweirdt was caught shortly after his attack and the group settled back into a good rotation. They maintained 50 seconds onto the Côte de la Maljoyeuse, the final hill at 8.5KM to go. Rochas went on the attack and by the top, he had 6 seconds on Marchand, Swift, Milesi, and Izquierdo. At 5KM to go, the chasers caught Rochas and the group of 5 had around 30 seconds on the bunch. Lidl-Trek needed to catch the break to get bonus seconds at the finish if they wanted any chance to overtaking Strong in the overall. The problem for Vacak however was that he was just about out of teammates and he was forced to do the chasing himself. Intermarché-Wanty added men and were driving hard but the 5 riders ahead made it into the final kilometer still with a gap. They started playing around quite early because Swift was refusing to pull. Milesi went first at 350M as the road started to rise to the finish line. When the camera pulled back at 300M, we saw the charging peloton almost on the heels of the break. Izquierdo got a run off of Milesi's wheel and hit the finish line first to take his maiden professional victory. Strong powered his way through the break and finished second with Milesi holding on for third place. Strong redeemed his second place from last year with a convincing overall win. Vacek kept his second overall and Oliver Knight took third to cap off a good race for Cofidis which should give them confidence going into the next part of the season.