Tour de l’Ain was one of the more exciting races of the season with Visma Lease a Bike’s team made of young talent battling against the flying Frenchman Nicholas Prodhomme for three days in a row.
Tour de l’Ain 2025 stage 3 profile
On stage 2 Col de Menthières, Cian Uijtdebroeks and Nicholas Prodhomme rode away from everyone on Col de Menthières with 6.48 ᵉW/Kg for 17:33 min on a hard stage. Uijtdebroeks, with no sprinting abilities, had no chance against Prodhomme, who won his fifth pro win this season. Before 2025, Prodhomme had not won a single race and was gifted the first win in Tour of the Alps by 18-year-old Paul Seixas, who still is without a win.
Stage 3 was the queen stage and another chance for the white jersey group of Visma Lease a Bike to try to beat one of the most progressed cyclists of this year. Uijtdebroeks had Jorgen Nordhagen and Ben Tulett helping him. They paced Col de la Biche at 5.9 ᵉW/Kg for 17 minutes, setting a demanding tempo that thinned out the group. Tulett was the last one to pull for the Belgian on Grand Colombier, with Uijtdebroeks finally dropping Prodhomme on the steep gradients on the giant mountain. Prodhomme quickly lost a minute on the climb. Uijtdebroeks did Grand Colombier in 44:40 min with 5.93 ᵉW/Kg and was by 1:40 min quicker than Prodhomme and had a huge gap on everyone else, showing how hard this stage and the climb was.
Uijtdebroeks kept the lead and extended on the descent and final kilometres, soloing to his first pro victory and GC win after many setbacks in the previous two years. Uijtdebroeks celebrated the victory lifting his bike on the finish line. Not many cyclists had done it in a 2.1 race, showing how much this meant for the young Belgian.
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