Baltic Chain Tour 2025 began in Riga on the Bikernieki circuit with a 5.4 km team time trial. The fast and technical stage was won by the Estonian National Team, completing the course in 6 minutes and 1 second, ahead of Sweden’s Lucky Sport Cycling Team (+0.05”) and Danish club Team CO: Play Giant Store (+0.10”).

In the evening, the tour’s longest stage (186.5 km) was raced from Riga to Valga. Starting the stage in the yellow leader’s jersey was national team rider Rait Ärm. Early in the race, two riders broke away from the peloton but were caught again after the intermediate sprint in Sigulda. As the race progressed, the peloton split into two groups, and through the final technical corners, it was Estonia’s Markus Pajur who reached the finish line first in the border town’s central square with a time of 3:51:21, beating his teammate Rait Ärm and Quick Pro Team rider Oskar Nisu, who both received the same time as Pajur.

“The plan was to set up the finish for Rait Ärm, but things played out a little differently — in the end, it worked for us. We had expected the group to split in Sigulda. A very big group formed, and we knew at some point we’d be in trouble because we had five national team riders up front, and others weren’t too happy about it. So we had to sacrifice a lot,” said Pajur after taking the stage win.

In the general classification, Markus Pajur now takes over the leader’s jersey from his teammate. Going into tomorrow’s stage, Rait Ärm (Estonian National Team) sits second, just 2 seconds behind, while Axel Källberg (Lucky Sport Cycling Team) is third, 11 seconds down.

Tomorrow’s stage will cover 175.6 km from Tartu – Antsla – Tartu.