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Tour de France 2025 route will put Pogačar/Vingegaard rivalry back in – Rouleur

Tour de France 2025 route will put Pogačar/Vingegaard rivalry back in – Rouleur

The route announcement for the 2024 men’s Tour de France came without a major spanner in the works, no unconventional twist to make it stand out. There’s no sign of any road surfaces other than tarmac, the gravel and cobblestone experiments of past years unrepeated; no return of a team time trial, or any other kind of unconventional stage; and no other deviation from the finale in Paris as per last year. 

Rather, this looks every bit the typical Tour de France. It’s been nearly divided into seven flat stages, six hilly and six in the mountains, plus a couple of individual time trials to round it off. The edition won’t even have the novelty of any foreign visits, with all 21 stages held exclusively on French roads.

As such, there’s no reason not to expect that, notwithstanding the many variables regarding form, fitness and injury that can occur over the next eight months, the duopoly that has dominated the Tour de France since 2021 won’t continue. Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard last year broke a record by making it four consecutive Tours de France in which they have occupied the top spots on GC, making their rivalry the most sustained at this level in the race’s history. 

And not only that, no rider has even threatened to get near them. Remco Evenepoel last year came the closest, finishing third overall, but he was a distant 3:01 behind Vingegaard and 9:18 away from Pogačar. Still only 24, it’s anticipated that he hasn’t yet scaled the ceiling of what is capable of, and indeed in terms of time trialling, he can already more than match the big two, defeating them both in the week one stage against the clock at Gevrey-Chambertin last year. But Tuesday’s route announcement confirms that there will be just 44km of time trial spread across two stages, one of which is up a mountain. For Evenepoel to bridge the gap and challenge for yellow next year, he’ll need to yet further — and substantially — improve his climbing. 

This is a mountainous Tour de France weighted towards the pure climbers, meaning the best climber will likely be crowned champion. That is indeed normally the case at the Tour, but there is so much climbing scheduled for 2025 that riders have more leeway for mishaps in other stages, knowing there’s plenty of uphill road for them to make up any time lost elsewhere (like, say, in the crosswinds should the wind blow during some of the exposed northern stages). In total, there will be 51,550m…

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