Sam Bennett (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) scored his first win of the season in a messy sprint finish to round out stage 1 of the Tour de la Provence.
The Irishman hit the front in the dying metres of the 169km stage, coming through to beat Lukáš Kubiš (Unibet Tietema Rockets) and Alexis Renard (Cofidis) to the line as reigning champion Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) came home in fifth place.
The charge to the line in Saint-Victoret had been a disorganised one, with solo attacker Samuel Leroux (TotalEnergies) only caught with 18km to go after going on the attack 18km out.
The Irishman hit the front in the dying metres of the 169km stage, coming through to beat Lukáš Kubiš (Unibet Tietema Rockets) and A (Cofidis) to the line as reigning champion l-Trek were denied the win by the fast-finishing Bennett.
“We wanted to come here and get our first win of the season,” Bennett said after the stage. “We knew it was going to be quite a hard beginning of the race, but we managed to get over the first climb with enough riders to bring me back into the first group. The guys did a fantastic job, and it was terribly difficult, but we managed to pull it off.
“It was quite windy but it actually helped me because a lot of the time it was actually a headwind over the climb, so it allowed me to get over in a better group. It was quite good, and I quite liked the wind.
“The team were fantastic, and I want to thank them for the amazing support. They didn’t give up hope on me after Bessegès and we came here and I’m glad to repay them with a victory.”
Bennett now holds the race lead heading into another hilly day on stage 2. He has four seconds on Kubiš and six on Renard. Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious) lies in fourth place at seven seconds, while Pedersen is fifth overall, eight seconds down.
How it unfolded
The opening stage of the 2025 Tour de la Provence would take the peloton on a hilly 169.3km run from Marseille to Saint-Victoret. Three second-category climbs stood along the way while many more unclassified hills also dotted the route.
The attacks came from the very start as riders fought to make the break of the day before a group of just four broke clear in the opening kilometres.
Antoine Hue (CIC-U-Nantes), Baptiste Vadic (TotalEnergies), Maximilien Juillard (Van Rysel-Roubaix), and Victor Guernalec (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) were in the move as Lidl-Trek and EF Education-EasyPost) settled in to control the peloton behind.
The status quo didn’t hold for long, however, as the…
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