Lloyds Bank Tour of Britain Men 2025 Stage 1

September 2, 2025 Day 1 of the Tour of Britain starts on the East Coast in Woodbridge on the banks of the River Deben for 161KM of nearly pan-flat racing. The route zig-zags East and West on its way North with only two spots of interest along the way. The first is the only Mountains points on offer with 56KM to go. To call the climb a climb is very generous but there is a point on offer on top after 1.1KM at 0.8% average. The intermediate sprint point comes 12KM later in Halesworth before the fast run through Wrentham and into the finish along the beach in Southwold. Four riders got up the road right from the drop of the flag. The group consisted of Diego Uriarte of Equipo Kern Pharma, Joshua Golliker of the British National Team, and Milan Lanhove and Victor Vercouillie of Flander Baloise. Visma-Lease a Bike started riding when the gap got out to 2 minutes 40 seconds. Wind hit the riders mostly from the rear and pushed them quickly up the coast, through a rain shower, and to the KOM with 56KM to go. Lanhove won the sprint on top and then also won the intermediate sprint in Halesworth, quite comfortably on both occasions. Vercouillie attacked the break when the peloton had them in sight but he was swept up with 5KM to go as the sprint teams were jostling for position in the peloton. Lead outs got active with with 2.5KM to go with Uno-X Mobility, Unibet-Tietema Rockets, Visma-Lease a Bike, and Ineos shoulder to shoulder half-wheeling each other which pushed the speed higher. UAE-XRG found a way to the front and led through a left corner with 1,500M to go but Visma-Lease a Bike had the horsepower to retake the lead with two men in front of Olav Kooij under 1KM to go. The road went up slightly after the final corner at 300M which allowed Tord Gudmestad of Decathlon AG2R to slingshot their way around Kooij. The Dutchman got in the slipstream of Gudmestad and only came around in the last 10M to take the stage win. A few bike lengths back, Hugo Hofstetter of Israel-Premier Tech came across the line for third place.