Surprise victory for INEOS! Samuel Watson takes incredibly tight victory at Tour de Romandie prologue
CyclingTuesday, 29 April 2025 at 17:38
INEOS Grenadiers came to the Tour de Romandie with a strong squad, however very few would've expected it to be Samuel Watson to bring the team it's first victory on Swiss soil. The Briton was the fastest in the opening prologue, winning with a gap of less than a second.
Watson put in a time of 4:33 in the 3.4-kilometer tricky prologue in Saint-Imier, a time that would earn him the victory only 0.3 seconds faster than Ivo Oliveira, who himself is on stupendous form after his two victories at the recent Giro d'Abruzzo.
Remco Evenepoel, Stefan Küng and last year's prologue winner Maikel Zijlaard were all amongst the riders who set strong times, but it was truly a course designed for surprises and Watson took full advantage of it, taking the leader's jersey alongside him. Iván Romeo finished the day in third place.
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- All the best for '27 🙏😎
leedorney15-05-2025 - and his "worst" result - 7th in TTmobk14-05-2025
- Mads Pedersen is an absolute beast. He really didn't look like he'd make it up that last climb, but he dug very deep, and was there when it mattered in the end. Three stage wins in the first five stages is very impressive indeed.
santiagobenites14-05-2025 - On one side, he was unhappy due to the TDF no, but i suppose money and other aspects made the differenceabstractengineer14-05-2025
- True, but, Mads has a few more years of collection and his season’s tally will start levelling off whereas Jonas’ should be just starting so even if Mads overtakes him, it’s probably briefly. That now all being clear, obviously the greatest is Tony Rominger, at least that’s their most popular male cyclist, which is another way of saying he must have been great :-) Hey, sorry but if someone’s going to ask rabbit-hole questions, you can only expect rabbit-hole answers.Mistermaumau14-05-2025
- Yeah, “little guy” who already beat Groenewegen and Merlier ;-) Also love how the media overhype anything in cycling, TNT saying this was a HUGE win for the team, let’s go back to using superlatives corresponding to reality. An important win maybe but c’mon, 50 points more than second when we’re at 20000? Had the team gotten 4th 5th and 6th and missed the podium completely they’d have collected more points but NO-ONE except themselves would have written one single word about their performance. Still well done to them for proving that the stage 3 pundit criticism about the little guys was unnecessary.Mistermaumau14-05-2025
- The ranking points between Jakob Fuglsang and Jonas Vingegaard is huge, BTW.. about 6700 ranking points. Mads trails Jonas by 14 points.FredMan14-05-2025
- Greatest ever? Based on CyclingRanking.com, Rolf Sorensen is #1, Jakob Fuglsang is #2, Jonas Vingegaard is #3, and Mads Pedersen is a very close #4. If you'd rather rely on personal opinion, or favorites, or what not, it's anybody's guess.FredMan14-05-2025
- I love it when the "little guy" wins!acem8214-05-2025
- Yeah, TdF is completely overrated, only amateurs and has-beens participate. And little ole skimpy Jonas has only won it as often as Switzerland or The Netherlands or Germany and Australia combined. Prestigewise there is NO comparison until he wins either the WC again or something big coz sorry G-W is basically a 2nd rate race at their level and he’s not won much else except a decent collection of stages, which Jonas and plenty of sprinters win too. Until now, MP is about pulling level with Asgreen who also won stages and classics, was a WC and HE got himself a monument and almost as many almosts as Mads but in a career only half as long.Mistermaumau13-05-2025