Dutch rider Olav Kooij won the opening stage of the Tour of Britain after fending off a strong challenge from Tord Gudmestad.<\/b><\/p>\n
The pair went toe-to-toe in the closing stage of the 167.6km route between Woodbridge and Southwold. <\/p>\n
But the 23-year-old Team Visma-Lease a Bike rider crossed the finish line ahead of Norway’s Gudmestad, of Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, to claim a fifth stage win at the Tour of Britain since his debut in 2023.<\/p>\n
“It’s a really good feeling, of course. It’s always nice to win a race, and I have good memories from here two years ago,” Kooij said.<\/p>\n
“I was happy to come back to this race, and I’m really happy to continue the success of two years ago.”<\/p>\n
France’s Hugo Hofstetter of Israel-Premier Tech finished third, while Ineos Grenadiers’ Samuel Watson was the first British rider to cross the line in sixth place.<\/p>\n
Kooij leads the general classification with Gudmestad in second and Hofstetter third after stage one, which needed an early diversion because of a burst water main.<\/p>\n
Great Britain’s Joshua Golliker, meanwhile, is fifth in the overall standings. <\/p>\n
The 2025 Tour of Britain will also be the final professional race of Geraint Thomas’ illustrious 19-year career. <\/p>\n
The 39-year-old Welshman, who won the Tour de France in 2018, sustained a puncture on the opening stage but recovered to finish with the main field. <\/p>\n
The second stage on Wednesday will start and finish in Stowmarket, with the sixth and final stage finishing in Thomas’ home city of Cardiff on Sunday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dutch rider Olav Kooij won the opening stage of the Tour of Britain after fending off a strong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-392709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115136452664145373","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}