Overview
- Two kangaroos bounded onto the Stirling circuit with roughly 96–100 km remaining, colliding with the peloton and knocking down the race leader and several others.
- Vine remounted, changed bikes twice, rejoined the peloton and secured the overall title by 1:03 over Mauro Schmid, with Harry Sweeny third a further nine seconds back.
- Britain’s Matthew Brennan won the uphill sprint on the 169.8 km stage ahead of Finn Fisher‑Black and Tobias Lund Andresen.
- Multiple riders abandoned after the crash, including Mikkel Bjerg, Menno Huising, Lucas Stevenson and Alberto Dainese, and UAE finished with only Adam Yates and Ivo Oliveira supporting as Juan Sebastián Molano also withdrew.
- UAE reported Jhonatan Narváez sustained stable thoracic vertebrae compression fractures in an earlier crash, and after a heat‑shortened stage organizers faced renewed safety scrutiny as reports differed on whether the injured kangaroo was later euthanized.