Tour de Pologne 2025 Stage 3

August 6, 2025 On paper, this is the hardest day of the week. There is nearly 3,500M of climbing over 159KM on a circuit that starts and finishes in Wałbrzych in South West Poland on the Czechia border. There is not a meter of flat road on today's stage. There are seven categorized climbs with most between 1 and 2KM in length and very steep at 8-10%. The riders will get familiar with the climbs because most are taken on three times. The final four climbs on the route begin with Rzeczka (1.9KM at 9.7%) at 45KM from the finish, an uncategorized climb of 1.9KM at 8.1% at 40KM, Przełęcz Walimska (3KM at 7.6% but 12% for the first kilometer) 31KM from the end, and finally the Przełęcz Niedzwiedica (1.2KM at 8.8%) which peaks with 15KM to go. The last 15KM is generally rolling downhill which could create a regrouping of riders for a small group to come to the finish. Conditions were perfect for racing through the Wałbrzych Mountains in the region of Lower Silesian. A large group of over 20 riders got a gap but it was stitched back together. Timo Kielich and Fabio Van den Bossche of Alpecin-Deceuninck got away with Rémi Cavagna of Groupama-FDJ with 145KM to go. Another group of 7 riders split off and the bunch shut down which allowed their gap to grow. The chase group consisted of Pierre Thierry of Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Anthony Perez of Cofidis, Pepijn Reinderink of T-Rex Quickstep, Reuben Thompson of Lotto, Kelland O'Brien of Jayco AlUla, Ide Schelling of XDS-Astana, and Mateusz Gajdulewicz of the Polish National Team. The groups still had not come together by the first passage of the Przełęcz Walimska with 132KM to go but they were within 15 seconds. They finally made contact with each other at 128.5KM to go and had built a gap of 3 minutes back to the peloton. As race leaders, Decathlon AG2R took control of the pace making and kept the break around 4 minutes. Schelling was best placed in GC at 1 minute at the start of the day and was sitting as virtual leader on the road. The break started the Przełęcz Walimska for the second time, still holding around 4 minutes with 91KM to go. Over the top of the Przełęcz Walimska with around 83KM to go, Pello Bilbao of Bahrain Victorious followed a move by Chris Hamilton of Picnic-PostNL off the front of the peloton. Bilbao dropped back to the bunch but Hamilton persisted around 5 seconds off the front but was eventually caught. The move seemed to wake the bunch up to get moving a bit faster. Riders were getting nervous about the gap and UAE-XRG decided to take up the pace in the bunch on the second ascent of the Przełęcz Niedzwiedica. By the top, the gap was under 3 minutes and the break started to split up. Thierry, Thompson, and Schelling were dropped leaving seven riders at the front and they were rolling through and off quite well. Bahrain Victorious lit up the descent leading into an uncategorized climb at 58KM to go. They put the full team on the front for their leader, Antonio Tiberi, to make sure the race was open enough for a proper GC battle. Alessandro Verre of Arkéa-B&B Hotels attacked the peloton and bridged up to Thierry at the top for the descent. Thierry buried himself to the start of the dragging road heading towards the fierce Rzeczka climb. Verre was off alone but the UAE-XRG led peloton was just 25 seconds behind and closing. Verre was caught at the bottom of Rzeczka as UAE-XRG were piling on the pressure. O'Brien pushed on and only Kielich was with him at the top but Reinderinkwas able to claw his way back on. The gap to the bunch was just 1 minute 10 seconds with 41KM at the base of the third to last, steep, uncategorized climb. Only Reinderink and O'Brien were left at the front by the top, 50 seconds ahead of the reduced peloton of around 60 riders. Filippo Baroncini of UAE-XRG did a lot of work and took on the pace for the entire Walimska climb to dissuade any attacking from the other GC contenders. O'Brien was the last rider out front and he pushed on down the descent on narrow, twisting roads with about 15 seconds advantage. Diego Ulissi of XDS-Astana and Lorenzo Milesi of Movistar attacked from the peloton and made contact with O'Brien just as a crash in the bunch took down race leader Paul Lapeira, Rafal Majka, and others with 22KM to go. What was left of the peloton seemed to have called a truce to allow riders to get back on from the crash. The three leaders had 90 seconds with 15KM to go at the base of the Przełęcz Niedzwiedica for the final time. In the middle of the climb, the organizers stopped the race. After lots of deliberation and about 15 minutes of waiting, the racing was resumed but the GC times were neutralized for the entire stag. The leaders set off with a 40 second gap to the rest of the riders in the peloton. Visma-Lease a Bike got to the front because they had Matthew Brennan back in the bunch and wanted to set the finish up for a sprint. O'Brien did a fantastic job to stay with Milesi and Ulissi over the top of Przełęcz Niedzwiedica with 12.5KM to go. The leaders struggled on the main road leading to the finish and with Israel-Premier Tech adding to the chase, the gap was down to 15 seconds with 4KM to go. The gap was still 11 seconds under the 2KM to go banner and attacks started to fly from the peloton. A group of 10 or 12 split off the front and caught the leaders at 1,200M. Ineos missed it but were able to pull the race back together at 800M to go. For the second day in a row, Michał Kwiatkowski did the lead out for Ineos and dropped Ben Turner off perfectly at 200M. No one came near the Brit when he launched and he crossed the line for the biggest win of his career. Bilbao won the sprint for second with Andrea Bagioli of Lidl-Trek behind in third. Lapeira was able to finish and because the times were neutralized, he retains the GC lead going into the stage 4. Mathias Vacek was involved the crash and did not finish so his second overall is now occupied by Langelotti of Ineos with Jan Christen of UAE-XRG moving into third.