Tour de France 2025: GC Favourites

[Underneath text was written before the start of the Tour de France and has not been updated]

Tadej Pogacar won the Tour de France in 2020, 2021 and 2024. In the two intervening years, Jonas Vingegaard came out on top — thanks in part to excellent teamwork, but also because the Dane is simply a world-class rider. He may lack the flair and bravado of the Slovenian, but that might just be his strength: quietly doing what he does best, supported by a team that’s as smart as it is strong.

During this year’s Giro d’Italia, the strength of Visma | Lease a Bike was once again on full display, when Vingegaard’s super-domestique, Simon Yates, took the overall win. It was another textbook case of team tactics — with, not for the first time, a starring role for Wout van Aert. A triumph for the team, and a timely boost for the Brit, who will now take on the dirty work in the mountains for his leader with 100% motivation.

Where teamwork is Visma | Lease a Bike’s great asset, it remains the Achilles’ heel of Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates. The roster is full of quality riders, but many of them are not naturally inclined to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. That said, João Almeida may be about to change that tradition. The Portuguese rider has been in top form all season — with overall wins in the Tour of the Basque Country, Romandie and Suisse — and the big question is: will he be willing to put his talent entirely at the service of the team leader?

Like Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel is backed by a dedicated team, although in his case, he shares leadership with sprinter Tim Merlier, who naturally requires a lead-out train of his own. Beyond that, Evenepoel is still a step below the very top when it comes to Grand Tours. He won the Vuelta in 2022, but that’s already three years ago — whereas Vingegaard has twice triumphed in the biggest race of them all, the Tour. And then there’s Pogačar: three Tours plus the Giro.

Alongside Evenepoel, Primoz Roglic is — at least on paper — the best of the rest. The Slovenian boasts four Vuelta titles and a Giro win, but the Tour still eludes him. Whether he can finally pull it off at 35 remains to be seen. If he does, he’ll become the oldest post-war winner of the Tour — a record currently held by Cadel Evans, who was 34 when he claimed the yellow jersey in 2011.

Evenly matched
With two leading contenders so evenly matched, it makes sense to look at the strength of their teams. On paper, Vingegaard has the better mountain support. Matteo Jorgenson (winner of Paris–Nice this spring), Simon Yates (Giro winner), and former Vuelta champion Sepp Kuss are all on board. And on his day, Wout van Aert adds another dimension altogether.

Pogacar, meanwhile, can count on João Almeida and Adam Yates — though the latter has been a shadow of his usual self so far this year. Tim Wellens, Pavel Sivakov and Marc Soler will also be riding in support of the world champion, but it remains to be seen how valuable they’ll be once the race hits the high mountains.

Then again, Pogacar is often so strong he hardly needs a team to win. This season alone, he has soloed to dominant victories in Strade Bianche, the Tour of Flanders, Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. But those are one-day races — Grand Tours are a different beast. Who could forget how he cracked two years ago on the Col de la Loze, gasping: “I’m gone, I’m dead.” That was the result of several days of relentless pressure from Jumbo–Visma, the predecessor of Visma | Lease a Bike. It was stage 17, and it marked the moment Vingegaard secured back-to-back Tour victories.

In 2022, it was the climb to Hautacam where Pogacar finally broke. That day, Wout van Aert was the executioner. The Belgian powerhouse set such a fierce pace on the final ascent of stage 18 that only Vingegaard and Pogačar could hang on to his wheel — until the Slovenian cracked, and Van Aert handed over the stage — and effectively the Tour — to his teammate.

After two years without a Tour win, Pogacar struck back in style last year. Not only did he win the overall classification, but he also took six stage victories along the way. Vingegaard finished over 6 minutes behind in second, with Evenepoel a further 3 minutes down in third. It’s worth noting, however, that both had disrupted preparations after crashing heavily in the Tour of the Basque Country — in fact, they were barely recovered when the Tour de France started.

This edition will show whether Pogacar’s dominance last year was a result of disrupted preparations from Vingegaard and Evenepoel, or whether he truly belongs to a league of his own. If the Critérium du Dauphiné is anything to go by, the latter seems to be the case. On both summit finishes, he launched his attack early on the final climb. The rest of the field was immediately dropped — except for Vingegaard, who briefly followed but ultimately had to let go.

Earlier, we discussed the importance of team tactics. That’s all well and good, but if Pogacar keeps going early and turns every mountain stage into a mano-a-mano showdown, then all the strategies can be thrown out the window.

Warming up
This year, Pogacar took an unusual approach to his build-up. He rode just one stage race — the UAE Tour, which he won comfortably — and otherwise focused on one-day races. That is, until the Critérium du Dauphiné… where he took three stage wins and the overall classification.

Vingegaard, for his part, raced far less than intended. He won the Volta ao Algarve in February and looked on course to win Paris–Nice before crashing out. His teammate Matteo Jorgenson then went on to win that race for the second year in a row. Vingegaard, meanwhile, spent three months off the bike — and only recently returned to racing at the Dauphiné, finishing second overall, 1 minute behind Pogacar.

Evenepoel, too, was sidelined for a long spell after crashing. He impressed immediately on his comeback at the Brabantse Pijl in mid-April, and went on to win the final time trial in the Tour de Romandie. He then lined up at the Critérium du Dauphiné, where he won the time trial and took the yellow jersey, but in the mountains he was outclassed by Pogacar, Vingegaard, and Florian Lipowitz.

And what of Roglič? The former ski jumper had a rough start to the season in the Algarve but bounced back with an impressive performance at the Volta a Catalunya: two stage wins and the overall. He began the Giro as the clear favourite but crashed out before reaching Rome. The Tour will now be his first race since.

Roglic will have watched the Dauphiné with interest, as Lipowitz — who finished third overall — is set to be his key mountain domestique. Judging by the young German’s form and fearless riding, that partnership could well prove to be a powerful one.

[This article will be updated in the run-up to the Tour de France.]

GC Favourites 2025 Tour de France

***** Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard
**** Remco Evenepoel, Primoz Roglic
*** Matteo Jorgenson, Florian Lipowitz, João Almeida
** Enric Mas, Carlos Rodriguez, Lenny Martinez, Mattias Skjelmose
* Thymen Arensman, Santiago Buitrago, Simon Yates, Adam Yates, Eddie Dunbar