
Arensman wins toughest stage as Pogacar stretches lead
Arensman, who rides for Ineos-Grenadiers, posted the biggest victory of his career. After crossing the finish line in the deep fog enveloping the ski resort of Superbagneres, Arensman lay exhausted on the road with his head in his hands.
He went solo with 37km left from a breakaway, and quickly opened a comfortable lead. He started the final ascent to Superbagneres, which is more than 12km long, on his own and resisted the return of the main contenders.
It was Arensman's second Grand Tour stage win, having previously won a stage at the 2022 Spanish Vuelta.
As Arensman posed no threat to the overall standings, Pogacar and his teammates controlled the race from the back. The yellow jersey holder and his main challenger, Jonas Vingegaard, trailed by around three minutes with 8km remaining.
Vingegaard tried a move with 4km left but Pogacar responded with ease. The two rivals then watched each other closely and Arensman crossed first at the summit, more than one minute ahead of the duo.
Having won the previous two stages in the Pyrenees, Pogacar settled for second place. He accelerated in the final section to gain more time on Vingegaard, who completed the podium.
Overall, Pogacar increased his lead over Vingegaard to 4 minutes, 13 seconds, with Florian Lipowitz in third place, 7:53 off the pace after Remco Evenepoel abandoned his race.
Evenepoel, who was third overall, struggled early on as the peloton faced another day of suffering on climbs that are part of the Tour's lore such as the Col du Tourmalet, the Col d'Aspin, Col de Peyresourde and Superbagneres.
The Olympic champion was dropped on the ascent of the Tourmalet. Evenepoel won the opening time trial but suffered in the Pyrenees.
After struggling during Friday's uphill race against the clock to Peyragudes, he managed to keep his third place in the general classification.
Ben O'Connor was the highest finishing Australian rider, in 16th place, with Callum Scotson 19th. O'Connor is in 12th position overall.
Riders will leave the high mountains on Sunday's stage during a 169km ride from Muret to the medieval city of Carcassonne.
The race finishes next weekend in Paris.

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SBS Australia
10 hours ago
- SBS Australia
Tour de France: Arensman wins stage 19 as Pogačar keeps yellow
Thymen Arensman claimed his second victory in this year's Tour de France when he benefited from the top guns' waiting game to prevail in the 19th stage, the last mountain trek of the race. The Dutch Ineos Grenadiers rider, whose team have been facing doping questions related to their glorious days as Team Sky, went solo in the final climb to La Plagne before crossing the line two seconds ahead of Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar, who were second and third respectively. "I'm absolutely destroyed. I can't believe it," Arensman said. "Already one stage on the Tour was unbelievable, from a breakaway, but now from the GC (general classification) group, against the strongest riders in the world, it feels like I'm dreaming." Slovenian Pogačar retained the overall leader's yellow jersey and leads Vingegaard by 4:24 going into the final two stages and is widely expected to win a fourth title if he avoids a major incident. German Florian Lipowitz took fourth place on the shortened stage to cement his third place overall, stretching his advantage over fourth-placed Oscar Onley of Britain by 41 seconds to 1:03. It would have taken a colossal coup from Vingegaard to topple Pogačar on the final mountain test in the Alps, but the Visma-Lease a Bike rider only tried within the last 100 metres to take two seconds off of the Slovenian's lead, with Pogačar emerging as the puppet master of the peloton. A leading trio featuring France's Lenny Martinez and Valentin Paret Peintre as well as former Tour runner-up Primoz Roglic, reached the Col du Pre with a small gap of a chasing group after a brutal 12.2-km ascent at 7.7 per cent. The peloton, controlled by Pogačar's UAE Emirates-XRG, trailed by less than a minute. With two kilometres left in the climb up to the Cormet de Roselend (5.9km at 6.9 per cent), Paret Peintre and Roglic shook off Martinez, but only briefly as the Bahrain-Victorious rider clawed his way back. Roglic was then swallowed two kilometres before the final climb and spat out immediately. Austrian Felix Gall, gunning for a top five finish in Paris, accelerated 14.5km from the finish with Arensman, Pogačar and Vingegaard reacting. Pogačar made his own move 14km from the top with Vingegaard and Arensman the only riders able to get into his slipstream. Pogačar eventually let Arensman go and seemed content with setting a decent tempo to keep the Dutchman within reach, but the Slovenian eventually did not make the effort to go for a fifth stage win this year. Australia's Ben O'Connor, who brilliantly won Thursday's 18th stage, was placed 12th, ensuring he kept his overall 10th position in the GC. South Australian Callum Scotson (Decathlon Ag2r La Mondiale) was placed 24th. The place to watch the 2025 Tour de France — live, free and exclusive — plus the fourth edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is right here on the SBS On Demand Hub .

ABC News
10 hours ago
- ABC News
Thymen Arensman claims shortened 19th stage of the Tour de France as Tadej Pogačar all but locks up overall victory
Dutch rider Thymen Arensman launched a daring solo attack on a long final climb and held on grimly to win the 19th stage of the Tour de France. Although race leader Tadej Pogačar took a step closer to a fourth Tour title, the Slovenian star could not catch Arensman. He finished the stage in third place behind Dane Jonas Vingegaard, who just beat Pogačar to the line. It was a rare success for the two-time Tour winner Vingegaard over Pogačar in this year's race but ultimately made little difference, since Pogačar is 4 minutes and 24 seconds ahead of Vingegaard with two stages left. Vingegaard could not drop Pogačar on the shortened stage, which featured a 19.1km finish up to the ski resort of La Plagne. Arensman had shown his climbing ability with a stunning solo effort last weekend to win a mammoth mountain stage. He made his move this time with 13km left. Pogačar and Vingegaard marked each other at first and chose not to follow. By the time they did, it was too late and Arensman won the stage by two seconds. "Tadej and Jonas are the strongest in the world, almost aliens, and I'm human," the 25-year-old Arensman said. "I can't believe I beat them today. I tried to not look behind." Moments after crossing the line, Arensman put his hands on his face and wept as he sat on the ground against a crash barrier, panting heavily with exhaustion. "I'm absolutely destroyed, I can't believe it. To win one stage from the breakaway was already unbelievable," he said. "But now to do it against the strongest riders in the world, it feels like I'm dreaming." Stage 19 was shortened after cows infected by a contagious disease were culled in an area along the mountainous route. It was meant to be 129.9km long but trimmed to 93.1km. Two of five climbs were removed, including the 13.7km Col des Saisies — where an outbreak of nodular dermatitis (lumpy skin) affected a herd of cows. "The discovery of an outbreak of contagious nodular dermatitis affecting cattle in a herd located specifically in the Col des Saisies necessitated the culling of the animals," race organiser ASO said. "It was decided, in agreement with the authorities, to modify the route." However, the stage still featured two Hors catégorie ascents — the hardest level of climbing — with a 12.6km ascent up Col du Pré followed by the trek up La Plagne. Primož Roglič, the 2020 Tour runner-up and a record-equalling four-time Spanish Vuelta champion, attacked near the top of Col du Pré but then faded well away. Tonight's 20th stage is a hilly 184.2km route through eastern France finishing in Pontarlier. The 21st and final stage sees three climbs up Montmartre hill — a short, sharp ascent which featured at the Paris Olympics last year — before a traditional finish on the Champs-Élysées. Around 3,000 police officers will be deployed to ensure security. AP

ABC News
11 hours ago
- ABC News
Tour de France Femmes 2025 hopes to recapture spell-binding 2024 edition, and continue to grow women's cycling from 'ugly' past
Four seconds may not seem like a lot of time. And yet, at the conclusion of the third edition of the Tour de France Femmes, those 4 seconds encompassed the universe between the unbridled joy of victory and the unadulterated pain of defeat. Poland's Katarzyna Niewiadoma edged out defending champion Demi Vollering by just four seconds — a margin so small it would mark the closest finish in grand tour history, men's or women's. The Polish rider's gutsy climb up the vaunted Alpe d'Huez to limit her losses to Vollering — whose own efforts through the famous switchbacks were just as impressive — will go down in cycling folklore. The mist. The desperation. The agonising wait for confirmation. It was a final stage that contained all the ingredients of a classic that duly delivered. This year's edition is being billed as the fourth of the Tour de France Femmes, but that's not entirely true. The first ever women's Tour de France took place in 1955, when 41 riders completed five stages of racing, with Manx rider Millie Robinson taking out the overall prize. Then, another long delay until 1984, when American rider Marianne Martin claimed overall honours in the first Tour de France Féminin, a race missing many stars due to the first ever women's Olympic road race, which took place at the same time. She stood on the final podium in Paris, alongside men's champion Laurent Fignon, who raised her arm in the air, a scene repeated every year until 1989. This was, on the face of it, as close to equality as women's cycling would get in relation to the Tour de France. The rest of the decade was dominated by the two biggest stars in the women's peloton, Italian Maria Canins and Frenchwoman Jeannie Longo. Canins, the Italian veteran and 15-time national cross-country skiing champion, won the first two Tours. Longo, who rubbed plenty of her rivals up the wrong way — including punching a rival during the race — finished second on those two occasions. The Frenchwoman, who would win 13 world titles in her three-decade career, won the next three, with Canins — then in her 40s, second. As chronicled so superbly in the SBS-screened documentary, Breakaway Femmes, women raced in national teams on the same roads as the men's race, on the same day — the women would race in the morning, the men following afterwards. Yes, the women did not race as far as the men, starting further down the route, but they did conquer many of the same climbs. For all intents and purposes, it was the same race. And despite massive crowds being seen to enjoy the racing, women being involved in the Tour was not without its critics. "The professionals didn't like us coming to their Tour de France," Longo said. 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In archive footage from the race, he talks about "the chauvinistic gap" in prize money while interviewing his wife Pat, who was director sportif of the British team. "Yes, it's a bit of a joke, really," she said in response. Women interviewed for the documentary noted that the coverage for the women was still a tiny fraction of what was given to the men, who were all professional, where the women were all amateur. There were other issues, too. While men were awarded the Combativity award for the most exciting racing each day, women in the race were awarded the elegance prize. "They stand out differently," a voiceover in archive footage says on a film. "They must be stylish to create a shock. A shock in the heads of men, but also of race organisers. "The 'elegance prize' is awarded for each stage." The prize was a shopping spree in Paris. Kelly-Ann Way, understandably, described it as "demeaning". The men also continued to look down on the women, with two-time Paris-Roubaix winner Marc Madiot describing women as "ugly" on the bike in a staggering interview on French TV, right in front of Longo. The last men's Tour de France winner from France, Fignon, said, in that same archive footage: "It's just not a sport with a feminine aesthetic. "It's just not a pretty sight." "There are masculine sports, and feminine sports," Madiot said. "A woman dancing is very pretty. At the time, Madiot was the French champion, so his voice carried some weight, regardless of how poor his attitude was. "Women have always been daughters of a lesser god," Italian cyclist Alessandra Cappellotto said, poignantly. Despite such an impressive yet troubled backstory, the 2024 edition of the Femmes was a fitting addition to the annals of the world's greatest and most famous race. Vollering had taken the yellow jersey after winning the stage 3 time trial on her home roads of the Netherlands. But, on stage 5, a flat sprinters' stage into Amnéville, she crashed just 6.5km from the finish. Clearly hampered by what later turned out to be a broken tailbone, Vollering remounted and did her utmost to limit her losses en route to the finish. However, not one of her SD Worx teammates came back to help her, an issue that still rankles, and felt like "a slap in the face" by the defending champion. Has a year eased the pain of that betrayal? Apparently not. When Tadej Pogačar crashed on stage 11 of this year's men's Tour de France, the main favourites waited for the defending champion to rejoin them. The situation was different — at the Femmes last year the peloton was charging to reel in a breakaway before the final sprint, while the men were in a separate group a long way from victory. But Vollering still chirped up on Instagram. "So kind of the bunch to make the decision not to use this crash of @tadejpogacar to take time on him," Vollering wrote on her Instagram story. "Guess men are a bit more kind." To make matters worse, her SD Worx teammate Blanka Vas sprinted to victory, the Hungarian claiming afterwards that her radio wasn't working and she didn't know her leader was stricken behind. Had just one of her teammates helped, it may have made all the difference. Vollering has since, perhaps unsurprisingly, moved on from the team, joining FDJ-Suez where she will hope to regain the title in this year's edition, which, like the men's race, heads out of Brittany and cuts across the country to finish at Châtel on the Swiss border. There are nine stages, covering 1,165km of road with 17,240m of elevation gain over the nine days. Two of those stages are mountainous — the feature 8th stage, including a trip up the legendary Col de la Madeleine — two more are classed as medium mountains, another two as hilly, and three flat stages for the sprinters. Her stiffest opposition to victory may well come from the subtly-renamed SD Worx-Protime, with runner-up in 2023 and reigning world champion Lotte Kopecky set to challenge as leader of her former team — whatever leadership means in a team so jam-packed full of stars. Kopecky is far more suited to one-day races, but is far from a lump in the mountains, and has dropped her weight a fraction to better handle the mountain climbs. But then there's Anna van der Breggen, two-time former world champion and the team's ex-director sportif, who is back out of retirement and will be an option as well, with the team also hunting stage wins with Dutch national champion Lorena Wiebes and Blanka Vas. Speaking of the greats, arguably the greatest all-round cyclist in history, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will be carrying the host nation's hopes. The 33-year-old is, to put it politely, a complete freak. Ferrand-Prévot has won world titles in cyclo-cross, gravel and on the road, as well as winning 12 world championships in various mountain bike disciplines, capped by winning Olympic gold in Paris last year. Now she's back on the road, winning Paris-Roubaix and finishing on the podium at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Strade Bianche on her return, with a focus on winning the yellow jersey. Can any Aussies challenge? Neve Bradbury, Brodie Chapman, Amanda Spratt, Sarah Gigante, Ruby Roseman-Gannon, Lucie Fityus and Emily Watts are set to start the race, but one name stands out above all others. Gigante of AG Insurance -Soudal had a brilliant Giro d'Italia Donne, finishing in third place, just 1 minute 11 seconds behind overall winner, Elisa Longo Borghini. By winning both mountain stages, Gigante won the mountains jersey in a breakout performance from the 24-year-old. Incredibly, it could have been even better. Had Gigante not lost 1 minute and 42 seconds in crosswinds on the sixth stage, she could conceivably have won the title and catapulted herself into the conversation as one of the favourites for multiple grand tours to come. This all after an interrupted summer where she needed major surgery after being struck down by iliac artery endofibrosis. Is this young Victorian a smoky for a podium at the Femmes? You can't rule her out.