Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-AlUla) has claimed his second triumph in three days at the 2025 Tour of Slovenia with a late but well-calculated drive for the line.
A winner in the same finish town of Ormož both in 2024 and 2023, 12 months later and at the end of Wednesday's rolling 162.7-kilometre stage, Groenewegen outpaced UAE Team Emirates-XRG fastman Juan Sebastian Molano and Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious).
The Dutch National Champion was already victorious on stage 1 of the 2025 race, and while Saturday's summit finish on the Golte pass is a battle for the overall challengers, Sunday's final stage to Nove Mesto may yet see Groenewegen add a third to his 2025 haul.
The last survivor from a 160km break, late in the day, Nejc Komac of Factor Racing had made an impressively strong defence of his much-reduced lead on the lumpy, but not excessively tough category 4 ascent of Jeruzalem.
After Komac was reeled in past the summit and with just four kilometres to go, Factor teammate and New Zealand teammate Paul Wright also made an effort to clear. But to no avail as the bunch, driven by a four-squad powerhouse of UAE, Bahrain, Jayco and Lidl-Trek, reached speeds of up to 60 kph as they swept into the small finishing town.
Then after moving into pole position with 500 metres to go and despite a sustained late challenge by Molano, Groenewegen kept his cool then finally opened up the throttle late on a long lefthand curve, comfortably claiming the victory by half a bike length.
Overall, there was no change, with Jan Christen (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) still ahead by 16 seconds of Anders Hallend Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) for a second straight day, with Tao Geoghegan Hart (Lidl-Trek) in third at 21 seconds.
Results
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