The Tour is always a journey in the memory of the child’s finger that in an atlas on sweaty July afternoons travels through unknown places on the map of France following the profile of a stage, tries to recreate them in its overflowing imagination, and records them forever associated with the names of its champions, the Breton Hinault, the Norman Anquetil, or leatherhead Robic on the Bonsecours slope, Tour del 47, and Louison Bobet, and in 2025, on a map presented this afternoon, Tadej Pogacar will once again cover the places of old myths, a red carpet for his ethereal pedal strokes, and he will try to increase the number of his own and to fix his name forever, that of a Slovenian in Gotha, as he has already done to the Planche des Belles Filles (2020), the Grand Bornand (2021) or Plateau de Beille (2023).
Perhaps you will be able to mark the Peyragudes plateau as your own, at the end of a time trial of 11 very tough kilometers (three on false flat, eight at 8% with a section at 16%, 28 minutes fullwatts, Pogacar’s ideal measurement in the 13th stage), or perhaps the last four kilometers of the Col de la Loze, unprecedented on a bike path above Courchevel, where in addition, the Slovenian tiger will face the possibility of erasing the one It was perhaps his worst day in his Tours, the final collapse in 2023 against Jonas Vingegaard, and what was believed to be the great confirmation that long, very long climbs were the Dane’s garden and the Slovenian’s hell. It will be the 18th stage, the queen stage, 5,500 meters of altitude difference in 170 kilometers, with the 22 kilometers of the Glandon (1,924m altitude), the 19 kilometers of the Madeleine (2,000m) and the final 26 kilometers to the millionaires altiport that They ski Courchevel (2,304m, the highest peak of Tour 25) or perhaps Mont Ventoux, another mountain of annoying memory in their memory.
The director of the Tour, Christian Prudhomme, who refuses to stop being that child, talks about the Tour next July (from 5, Saturday, to 27, Sunday; from Lille, there in the north, to Paris, the Champs-Élysées reconquered after the Games) and talks about Bernard Hinault being the last Frenchman to win the Tour, it will be 40 years ago next July, his fifth personal Tour, and that is why, in Brittany, he will pass through his town, through the lands that the Badger sometimes passes the tractor in the hay fields, by Yffiniac, and how only the great can suffer great defeats, and they are also remembered in their fall, and the betrayal of the pride of the Breton who refuses to bow to the pact with LeMond and led him to attack on the descent of the Tourmalet towards Sainte Marie de Campan and its forge, reach his apotheosis at the top of the Aspin via Payolle, faint on the Peyresourde and die on the final ascent towards Superbagnères in the Tour of ’86 .
He did not win his sixth Tour. His LeMond teammate, La Vie Claire, won the first of his three, and 39 years later, the 14th stage of the 2025 Tour traces its 183 kilometers from Pau along the same roads and mountains. And because Louison Bobet, the other great Breton of cycling, just 70 years ago he won his third Tour, the first cyclist to win three Tours in a row, the next stage will leave his village, Saint Méen le Grand, passing by his bakery towards fields invaded by pig farms and the smell of slurry. Previously, the Tour had passed through Rouen, in Normandy, where the Seine meets the Atlantic and Anquetil, who would have turned 91 on January 8, planted strawberries before dedicating himself to winning Tours, and won five, which Pogacar may win, or more, and 2025 could be the fourth for the Slovenian star, who, at 26, reigns in cycling as only Eddy Merckx reigned before, absolute.
After three years of departures abroad, Copenhagen, Bilbao, Florence, the Tour of the 25th starts in France and at no time crosses its borders, which it borders, and its coast, counterclockwise, the Pyrenees, at the beginning of the second week, before Alps, the third, and, in between, Mont Ventoux. There will be no pavés despite passing through the mines of Valenciennes, next to the Roubaix of Charles Crupelandt and Jean Stablinski, and Dunkirk, and its fans, Normandy and Brittany, will be the playground, the ring for the battle of the puncheursVan Aert, Van der Poel, Biniam Girmay, Thibau Nys and, if it takes a bite, as always, Pogacar, on the final slopes of Boulogne sur Mer, Vire, Rouen and in the Mûr of Brittany. The fifth stage will, however, be very serious, 33 kilometers of very flat time trial around Caen, the most favorable, ideal terrain, to check if Vingegaard of the 25th, the year after his terrible fall of the 24th, will be able to maintain the type before Pogacar. You pass through Clermont Ferrand on July 14, but avoid the fireworks at the Puy de Dôme, replaced, at the end of the volcano stage, by the small Mont Dore, in the shadow of the Puy de Sancy, before reaching to the Pyrenees and its three great days, Hautacam, Peyragudes and Superbagnères.
In the lunar landscape of Mont Ventoux, Vingegaard discovered in 2021 the weakness of Pogacar and his own strength, but then he was climbed in passing, twice, and Van Aert’s unexpected epic. At the top, next to the observatory, it is expected to finish for the first time since 2013, when Chris Froome annihilated the flight of the little bird Nairo Quintana, a bloodless little angel in the heights of Provence, since the next time the bald giant was scheduled, in 2016, forced the improvisation of the finish line at the Chalet Reynard, at the exit of the forest, and there the heroic talk of Froome was staged, who, after breaking his bicycle, ascended the last meters running on foot, unsteadily on his cycling shoes .
After the Alps, Courchevel and La Plagne of the great Indurain of ’95, and the absinthe sagebrush fields, and distilleries, in the Pontarlier Jura, and reaching just over 50,000 meters of elevation gain (lower hardness than in recent years) , the big boucle It will end on a Sunday in the heart of Paris, on the Champs-Élysées that were the final of the Tour for the first time 50 years ago, in 1975 when Eddy Merckx failed to win his sixth Tour.
