PREVIEW & Favourites Tour of Britain 2025 stage 2 - Two-for-two for Olav Kooij?

Stage 2 of the Tour of Britain on Wednesday, 3 September 2025, is not going to be a very different day from the opening stage. Olav Kooij has taken over the race lead and will be the strongest sprinter on what should be a second regular bunch sprint. The start is at 12:15 CET and we expect the finish around 15:50 CET.

Stage 2 of the race is not too different from the opening day, a day with no climbing whatsoever where a bunch sprint is inevitable - unless there are some weird tactics at play. The stage features a full loop around the city of Stowmarket that will host the start and finish of the stage.

Today was a textbook sprint day with no threats to a bunch sprint and we had Team Visma | Lease a Bike do a perfect job to leadout Olav Kooij into perfect position for the final sprint. It was an uphill one, but the Dutchman proved his form and strength in ideal fashion. However Decathlon AG2R's Tord Gudmestad put in a sprint that was incredible, specially coming from behind, but this was also influenced by the uphil gradients.

In a pure flat sprint it will be much harder to replicate this, and Kooij will be the mean to beat. Sprinters like Luke Lamperti, Hugo Hofstetter, Alexander Kristoff, Alberto Dainese and Tim Torn Teutenberg will be amongst his biggest rivals on the day, but the lack of a very big sprinter field could see more surprises emerge. We will have three pure sprint stages before the race goes onto it's hilly days where the overall classification will be decided, and Remco Evenepoel will be in action.

*** Olav Kooij
** Thor Gudmestad, Luke Lamperti
* Matthew Brennan, Alexander Kristoff, Tim Torn Teutenberg, Alberto Dainese, Hugo Hofstetter, Milan Menten, Sam Watson

Pick: Olav Kooij

How: Regular bunch sprint.