The 2025 Tour de France Preview

At least, a preview of the first week, and the secondary classifications

Photo Credit: Josephine Bruder, Ville de Paris

This is it, la grande boucle, the big tamale, the first among equals. The race for the yellow jersey. The time of year when you open up Peacock at the crack of dawn and put the skinny guys in brightly-colored leotards on your TV or your tablet and pretend to work or make breakfast or go for a spin on your own stationary bike.¹

This is the time of year when it’s fun to drive along the thoroughfares of your local suburban town, and whenever you see some middle-aged dentist chugging up the hill (and there will be plenty), roll down your window, put on your best Phil Liggett impression, and should “THE MAILLOT JAUNE.”

But before we get started, there are two pieces of slightly-less-fun cycling news I wanted to touch on.

First: This is one of the craziest 10-second cycling videos I’ve ever seen.

@tntsportscyclingA lucky escape for Vittoria Guazzini 😬 #cycling #roadcycling #italy

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That’s Vittoria Guazzini, the new Italian time trial champion, going for the double at the national road race championship. For most of that video, it looks like a pretty routine crash; Guazzini hit a corner too fast, maybe found a dusty patch that cost her some grip, locked her brakes, and ended up bouncing off the ground and into a stone wall.

I bet that hurts like hell, but you see worse every day. Guazzini escaped the incident with scrapes and bruises but no broken bones or serious injuries. Tough luck, go get ‘em next time.

Except then the motorbike rounds the curve and shows what’s on the other side of that wall: NOTHING. Like, thank God Guazzini hit the ground, because if she’d gone straight into that wall and flipped over the handlebars, there would’ve been nothing to arrest her fall until she hit Xibalba. I can imagine, but would prefer not to, the kind of injuries that would’ve befallen her then.

I guess the lesson here is, maybe the Italian cycling authorities should put up a few more safety barriers on these steep descents (we all remember Chloe Dygert v. the Armco barrier at the 2020 world time trial championship). Also: There’s no shame in braking a second too early.

Guazzini is OK, but Richard Carapaz isn’t. Fresh off third place at the Giro, EF’s leader went home to Ecuador, and while there caught a gastrointestinal infection that has ruled him out of the Tour de France.

I don’t think Carapaz was ever a serious GC threat at the Tour; not only did he already have a full Giro in his legs, but I expect this to come down to Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, followed by a one-man class of Remco Evenepoel, followed by a one-man class of Primož Roglič. If Carapaz had targeted, the realistic best-case scenario is he beats out Enric Mas for fifth place, and I don’t know if that’s really worth it.

What Carapaz did last year—spend a day in yellow, then go stage-hunting, where he ended up with a stage win, the polka dot jersey, and the overall combativity award—was way more fun. Either way, we’re not going to see it, because one of the best riders in the world has pooped his way out of the biggest race of the season.

It really puts into perspective the physical demands of a three-week GC challenge. That you can get the shits so bad that you know, a week in advance, that you’re not going to be able to ride your bike.²

Even without Carapaz, EF has Ben Healy, Kasper Asgreen and Neilson Powless on the roster, which makes for one hell of a three-headed stage-hunting monster. I can’t speak to what EF’s management or sponsors want, but I think a balls-out multi-pronged stage-hunting attack fits really well with the team’s heavily cultivated iconoclastic brand. In addition to just being more fun to root for, day in and day out.

And stage hunting is what we’re looking at for the first week and change of the race. There are enough small-but-difficult hills in the first 10 stages that I expect the yellow jersey to change hands a couple times. Maybe more if a big breakaway gets off the leash and puts several minutes into the peloton.

But there are 22 categorized climbs in the first nine stages of this race: 10 Category-3 and 12 Category-4. Stage 10 is the only real mountain stage before the first rest day, but while it has seven Category-2 climbs³ and a single Category-3, we don’t se a Category-1 climb until Stage 12, which ends in the outside-category summit finish at Hautacam.

Pogačar and Roglič being Pogačar and Roglič, I expect them to turn a couple of these puncheur-type Cat-3 climbs into an opportunity to steal a few seconds in the GC battle, but the only big push-and-shove I expect among the leaders should come in Stage 5, the first of two individual time trials.

This is a pretty flat 33-kilometer ITT, where Evenepoel ought to put time into his rivals. But Vingegaard, Pogačar and Roglič are all really good time trialists too, so I don’t expect him to drop a nuke on everyone else and build a four-minute advantage he can nurse into the third week.

For riders who care about time gaps, the goal for the first nine stages⁴ is going to be pretty straightforward: Don’t crash, don’t get dropped, and don’t blow the time trial. Apart from that, any losses incurred in the first half the race can be recovered in a single climb later on.

That doesn’t mean we’re in for a dud of a first week, all sprint stages, or anything like that. I actually think the racing on a day-by-day basis is going to be quite good as we wait for the GC battle to heat up.

Stage 6 is tailor-made for a strong break, with a climb in the first 40 kilometers, followed by a long descent, and relatively little flat ground in the back half where the peloton can reel a breakaway back in. Stages 2, 4 and 7 have multiple climbs in the last 20 kilometers, which make them prime territory for KOM point-hunters to animate the race and cause a split that could lead to a run to paydirt.

I expect EF, Tudor, and Uno-X to be all over those stages; with big-name puncheurs in the squad and little hope for a GC fight, grabbing a stage win early ought to be the priority. Lidl-Trek is also completely loaded for this, with Quinn Simmons, Thibau Nys, and wily old Toms Skujiņš in the squad. Jonathan Milan and Mathias Skjelmose could also make noise in the first two weeks, but Milan is a major green jersey threat and Skjelmose could have back-end-of-the-top 10 GC ambitions, so it’ll depend on what their orders are.

With that in mind, I’ll be looking for three things before the first rest day: First, whether anyone goes all-in not to win the king of the mountains jersey, but to wear it for a while.

The polka dot jersey is a tough competition to handicap. Nobody really goes all-out to chase it before the race starts; it just happens, either as the result of a good stage hunting campaign or a strong GC bid. Moreover, the mountain points in a grand tour are backloaded. This year, there are two HC climbs, a Cat-1, and two Cat-2s in Stage 19. That’s enough points that a rider could basically sew up the dots in a single day, irrespective of what came before. And unless one specific rider has been strong, consistent and diligent enough through the middle of the race to put the dots on ice, the jersey usually changes hands late on and is worn into Paris by a rider who was barely in the picture after two weeks.

Two years ago, EF put Powless in every break possible in the first half the race. He spent gobs of energy going after every point he could, spending all day pulling in the break so he could be first up a Category 3 climb. This was an awful strategy from a standpoint of actually winning anything. Powless looked pretty strong in a couple stages, but he always pulled too hard early in the race and gassed on the final stage.

He ended up surrendering the polka dot jersey after Stage 13, winning no stages, and going home with just a single-stage combativity prize. But he did spend more than half the Tour in a distinctive leader’s jersey, which meant he got to do the podium ceremony every afternoon and start the stage alongside the maillot jaune the following morning. That had to be worth quite a bit to EF’s sponsors. After all, they underwrite these teams to get their company logo on TV.

The first half of this year’s Tour, with its dearth of big climbs and various sawtooth profiles, is prefect for someone⁵ who’s handy in a breakaway and has a team that can sell “Hey, we got in the newspaper!” as a big win for sponsors.

Thing to watch no. 2: Which sprinters come out of the gate hot. Last year saw Biniam Girmay stake an early claim to the green jersey when he unexpectedly beat Jasper Philipsen heads-up in a pure sprint.

The everlasting tension in the points classification race is between pure sprinters like Philipsen, who can go faster than anyone else but need flat ground and a leadout to do it, and hybrid sprinters like Girmay who might not be quite as quick on paper but can get over hills and hold their own in a break.⁶

I want to know who’s got the legs. Girmay hasn’t won a race since Stage 12 of last year’s Tour. Jonathan Milan has won the points classification both times he’s raced the Giro, but he’s never done the Tour before. How does he look? If Alpecin-Deceuninck sets up a Kaden Groves-Mathieu van der Poel-Philipsen, that looks all but unbeatable on paper. But will they put all their eggs in that basket?

Which leads into question no. 3: What do everyone’s priorities look like?

Is van der Poel going to be the world’s most expensive leadout man, or is he going to be left to chase his own ambitions? Will Milan get support from Lidl-Trek? Will he be deployed as a pure sprinter or will he start to chase breakaways? Ditto Girmay and Intermarché. How much will Visma-Lease a Bike let Wout van Aert chase stage wins, or even the points jersey? Or are they going to have him save his bullets to help Vingegaard later in the race? I don’t think Soudal-Quick Step’s goals of helping Evenepoel’s GC and Tim Merlier’s sprinting ambitions should conflict too much, but that’s worth watching as well.

There’s only one boring outcome for the green jersey: A hybrid sprinter, like Girmay or van Aert, has a commanding lead at the first rest day. Otherwise, the points classification will either be wide open and turn into a breakaway competition, or it’ll turn into a game of drop-the-big-guy in the mountains.

In 2017, big German sprinter Marcel Kittel won five stages in the Tour, and ended Stage 15 with a lead of 89 points in the green jersey standings over hybrid sprinter and recidivist Milan-San Remo bridesmaid Michael Matthews.

Matthews outclimbed Kittel to win Stage 16 outright, and then on Stage 17—which had two outside-category climbs, including the Col du Galibier—Matthews’ Sunweb team drilled the tempo. In order to win the green jersey, you have to finish the race, and in order to finish the race, you have to end every stage within the time limit. Matthews, a hybrid sprinter with some climbing chops, finished 28:46 behind Roglič, the solo stage winner, without much difficulty. Kittel, who was shaped like a giant meaty triangle and went uphill about as well as a bowling ball covered in vaseline, missed the time cut altogether and was eliminated from the race entirely. The green jersey went to Matthews by default, and he kept it all the way to Paris.

There is, at the risk of being crude, some really nasty shit in the second half of this race. So if Merlier⁷ or Philipsen or one of the other pure sprinter has a big first week, expect a big effort from one of the other teams to try to shoot the moon later.

I’ll be back at some point next week with a fresh look at the GC battle heading into the second week. Until then, I leave you with this:

1. Or sleep off a hangover. Cycling is, like, NASCAR-level white noise if you need another REM cycle to shake off your bad decisions.

2. RIP. In lieu of flowers, send Cottonelle.

3. Which is a buttload in one day, even if there’s no single massive mountain to climb

4. Probably 10, unless something wild happens

5. Julian Alaphilippe, perhaps?

6. This example might be a little harsh on Philipsen, who’s been great in the classics and can climb better than the beastly speedsters of the generation before, but I hope you get the idea

7. Who got OTL’d out of the 2021 Tour