Étoile de Bessèges: Søren Wærenskjold surprises on stage 2

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The second stage of the Etoile de Besseges 2025 was taken by Søren Wærenskjold of Uno-X Mobility with an incredible sprint showing amazing speed to beat Arnaud Demare of Arkea-B&B Hotels and Paul Magnier of Soudal-QuickStep to the line with Magnier keeping the leader's jersey.

The second stage of the Etoile de Besseges began in Domessargues with a lumpy route of just under 166km to the finish in Marguerittes. The 20-year-old French sprinter, Paul Magnier (Soudal-QuickStep), started in the orange leader's jersey.

A breakaway of five riders formed very quickly with leader of the King of the Mountains, Axandre Van Petegem (Wagner Bazin WB), getting out front for a second day in a row. He was joined by Louis Kitzki (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Victor Vercouillie (Flander-Baloise), Yohann Simon (AUB) and Maël Guégan (CIC-U-Nantes). The maximum gap the break were allowed was four minutes.

The majority of the work in the peloton was done by Soudal-QuickStep, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and Unibet Tietema Rockets for their main men for the sprint.

In the break it was mountains jersey wearer, Van Petegem, who took the first three KoM sprints ahead of his rival in that competition, Vercouillie as they continued their battle from stage one. With Van Petegem extending his tally to 24 points over Vercouillie's 16 points.

When the race crossed the finish line for the first of two times the gap was just over a minute between the break and the peloton with just under 40km to go as the peloton began turning the screw as the final look had a few little climbs along the route.

Into the final 30km and different teams started to move up in the peloton pushing out the teams that had controlled all day. Decathlon-AG2R, Lotto, Uno-X Mobility, Arkea-B&B Hotels, TotalEnergies and EF Education-EasyPost took over all in colour order.

The gap was closing rapidly but, suddenly, a member of the public came onto the road in their car and was driving towards the peloton. Forcing the peloton to almost entirely stop and causing a small crash in the carnage. This meant the break's gap went up to over a minute with the chase behind becoming frantic.

Attacks began to come from the peloton led by Ineos Grenadiers riders along with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's Jan Tratnik and Soudal-QuickStep's Josef Cerny along with a couple others. But, it was neutralised very quickly.

Vercouillie took the maximum points over the top of the final climb with 8km to go and closed the gap to Van Petegem by just two points. The descent off the Côte Cabrières was very technical and the peloton shut the break down with just over 5km to go.

Soudal-QuickStep took complete control in the final 4km for the race leader, Magnier, as the race took on more technical roads. The Belgian squad looked in control with Magnier perfectly placed.

However, a late move came inside the final kilometre from Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost) but that was dragged back by a superb leadout by Ben Turner for Axel Laurance but the U23 world champion launched too late and Wærenskjold came flying over the top of him and Madis Mihkels (EF Education-EasyPost) to storm to victory ahead of French duo of Demare and Magnier.

Stage three of the race adds even more climbing as the stages continue to get harder and harder. It should be another bunch sprint but there are a lot of opportunities for attacking on the 164km route starting and finishing in Bessèges.

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