On Saturday, July 5, 2025, at approximately 9am in Morgan Hill, California, there will be no meetings taking place at Specialized’s global headquarters. Nor will there be any happening on the other side of the world, at Castelli’s offices in Fonzaso, Italy. Instead, all eyes will be locked on Lille, where the first stage of this year’s Tour de France will be reaching a fast and dramatic conclusion.
“We’ll all have to gather round one desk to watch it, otherwise the IT department will send emails round saying we’re killing the internet bandwidth,” laughs Sam Benedict, Global Category Leader at Specialized.
“During the Tour, it would be really interesting to measure the lack of work that gets done from eight to nine thirty in the morning when the stage is ending, because putting in meetings then is literally pointless. If you send a calendar invite, people will be like, ‘What the hell are you doing?!’ There could be people around the world waiting to start the meeting, but we know what’s important here.”
A 185-kilometre loop to the west of Lille, with 997 metres of elevation gain, will decide the first yellow jersey wearer of this year’s Tour de France. On paper, there’s little to prevent a bunch sprint; only a few punchy climbs pepper the route, and plenty of teams will have serious interest in keeping things together for a frantic gallop to the line. The stakes on that Saturday are as high as they get in this sport: the leader’s jersey of the most spectacular bike race on the planet is up for grabs. Every sprinter in the world will want it, but employees squinting at live broadcasts of the race via phone or laptop screens from Specialized and Castelli will be gunning for one man in particular: Soudal-Quick-Step’s Tim Merlier. The pressure on the Belgian rider’s shoulders weighs heavily.
“To be honest, the victory in stage one will be a dream. It’s maybe the only opportunity like this I’ll have to take in my career,” says Merlier. “The finish village is not far from where I live. We go there in the winter to drink coffee or do shopping. My family and friends are already all talking about being there.”
July 5 is a date that has been on Merlier’s mind ever since race organisers ASO made the 2025 Tour route public. He’s under no illusions that winning will be easy, and that’s why the Belgian rider is doing everything he can to try to make it a reality. Sprinting, he says, is…