Kooij bolts to third stage win as Grégoire seals Tour of Britain GC
Olav Kooij won a spectacular final stage of the 2025 Tour of Britain with a brilliant sprint, denying a cracking victory for the break in the final metres. Romain Grégoire hung on to win the general classification.
Stage 6 of the 2025 Lloyds Bank Tour of Britain was a 112.2-kilometre stage from Newport to Cardiff, covering 1450 metres of elevation across the stage.
The GC battle was set to go down to the wire with Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) leading the general classification by just 2 seconds over Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep).
It was a poignant and emotional beginning of the stage as the majority of the pre-stage was focused on the retirement of Geraint Thomas, who bowed out of his legendary career on home roads in Wales.
From the off, a group of four riders committed to getting involved in a breakaway on a gloomy day in Wales, with Bastien Tronchon (Decathlon AG2R), Juilus Johansen (UAE Team Emirates -XRG), Fred Wright (Bahrain-Victorious) and Mats Wenzel (Kern Pharma) up the road building a maximum advantage of just under 3 minutes.
The quartet ahead co-operated well, but their advantage in the final third of the race fell drastically, coming down to just 1:30 thanks to the work behind from Tudor, Visma | Lease a Bike and Groupama-FDJ.
It was set for a fascinating and brilliant finale with the game of chase between the break and the peloton well poised, with the break holding a 50-second gap as the race headed for the Caerphilly Mountain (1.3km at 9.6%) in front of packed out crowds.
A flurry of attacks followed from the GC group, with Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain-Victorious) looking the best as the break's advantage was slashed to just 10 seconds with 9.2 kilometres to go, which produced a small group of favourites after the summit.
Heading into the northern edge of Cardiff, Remco Evenepoel sneakily attacked from the GC favourites, as the strong breakaway, still, held on with Wright, Tronchon and Johansen ahead of the GC favourites and built their advantage to up to 20 seconds as group 2 ballooned in size.
It was all set for a nerve-wracking and fast finale as the breakaway hung on by the barest of margins as a cohort of teams sent riders to the front to try and bring the daring attackers who smelt glory back.
From out of nowhere, Olav Kooij (Visma | Lease a Bike) came from the depths to take yet another victory at the 2025 Tour of Britain with heartbreak for the breakaway, as they were caught with around 150 metres to go.
Samuel Watson (Ineos Grenadiers) finished second, with Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious) third. Romain Grégoire hung on to win the 2025 Tour of Britain general classification.
