Tour de France 2025 battle between Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard Hansen, Ben O'Connor leads Aussie charge

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

The 2025 Tour de France, which gets underway on Saturday, is beckoning cycling aficionados toward it like the most alluring and tantalising of treats.
This — the sport's most monumental test — is a race that promises everything.
Yet, due to one man's insane levels, it's a race that could ultimately deliver little in the way of a contest at the pointy end.
Tadej Pogačar, resplendent in the rainbow jersey of the reigning world champion — or more often than not in a coloured leaders jersey — is seemingly untouchable.
He has won three of the last five Tours de France (including 17 stage wins) an utterly dominant Giro d'Italia last year and a huge number of one-day classics, including four Il Lombardia's, three Liège-Bastogne-Liège's and two Ronde van Vlaanderen's — he sits on 99 professional race wins in his career.
Pogačar has had 22 days of racing this year and has finished on the top step of the podium nine times.
The 26-year-old has also won the general classification at the UAE Tour and, most notably, the Critérium du Dauphiné last month.
He is, no doubt, the overwhelming favourite to claim a second-straight victory at la grande boucle when the race rolls onto the Champs Élysées in Paris on July 27.
The Slovenian is, without question, the best and most versatile rider since Eddy Merckx dominated the sport through the 60's and 70's with such voracity that he was justifiably nicknamed the cannibal.
And where Merckx needed different rivals for different races — fellow Belgian Roger De Vlaeminck in the northern European classics and Luis Ocaña and Felice Gimondi in the grand tours — Pogačar is cultivating different rivalries too.
His exchanges with Mathieu van der Poel on the cobbles in the spring were a delight, Pogačar's wins at De Ronde and Strade Bianche matched in their epic quality, while van der Poel's triumphs against Pogačar at Paris-Rouxbaix and Milan-Sanremo were equally magnificent.
But van der Poel is not a chance to chase Pogačar up the mountains of the Alps or Pyrenees.
So now the Slovenian shifts his attention to his grand tour nemesis, Jonas Vingegaard Hansen.
No sport builds its mythology in the head-to-head battles between its biggest names as road cycling.
In a sport with so many variables, it seems improbable that a race can boil down to such a thing. And yet, throughout history, the sport's fanbase has been split between rivals often diametrically opposed in their personalities and approach to racing.
Italians Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi could not have been more different, with their furious battles in the 1940s and 50s helping Italy forget its post-War slump.
Then there were the two Frenchmen Jacques Anquetil; the controlling yet graceful "Maître Jacques" whose home town of Rouen will be visited on stage four, and Raymond Poulidor; the ever-popular and affectionately named "Pou-Pou" whose attacking flair and grit was so easily identifiable by so many of the rural French but never quite helped "the eternal second" earn victory as they battled for French hearts and minds in the 1960s.
Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault too gave the Tour a bitter rivalry that will be honoured this year when the race climbs Luchon-Superbagnères. In 1986, that was where the legendary head-to-head between brash America and old-world France came to such a dramatic head.
Now, it's the turn of the Dane and the Slovenian who — just like the legendary pairs of the past — are vastly contrasting in both personality and style.
Vingegaard is the ice man: steely, cool and relentless, single-mindedly pursuing the yellow jersey with every pedal stroke committed to that goal of victory in Paris in August.
Granted, this year he has shown a slightly different approach, being more personable and even launching ambitious attacking forays off the front on the flat.
Pogačar is something else entirely, though. A happy-go-lucky, attack-minded throwback who can't stop racing and winning — be it on the gravel of the Strade Bianche, the cobbles of De Ronde or the high-mountains of the Tour and Giro.
Despite such contrasting approaches and styles, between them they have won all five of the last Tours de France.
"There's nothing better than a duel. It's the spice of all sporting competitions," Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said in an interview with AFP this week.
And yet, the way that Pogačar blew his erstwhile rival away at the Dauphiné was alarming for those hoping for a tight battle for the yellow jersey.
Pogačar destroyed both Vinegaard and this era's grand tour third wheel Remco Evenepoel in the mountains last month: "It was amazing what he did … putting a minute into Jonas and almost two minutes into me," the Belgian former world champion said after the sixth stage of the Dauphiné.
"He has shown once again who is the best rider in the world."
And all this after the Slovenian beat Vingegaard, Evenepoel and van der Poel in a flat-chat sprint finish on stage one, although he did lose time on the time trial to perhaps offer some faint hope.
And Vingegaard is unlikely to have peaked for June — with another spell at altitude under his belt and a stacked team, the Dane will likely be far better in France over the next three weeks.
But the truth is, it would be an almighty shock if Pogačar did not win his fourth Tour this year.
"We're doing everything we can to make sure it's decided at the last moment," Prudhomme said.
"If he's at the same level as he's been in recent months, it will be very difficult for his rivals. That's also why the first week will perhaps be the most important in years. That's when they have to try to take time off him."
Of course, anything can happen in the race. Crashes, punctures, illness or loss of form can all wreck havoc on any rider, no matter how good they are, as one of the other contenders knows all too well.
Primož Roglič has five grand tour victories to his name and, backed by Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe and the good will of a huge number of supporters, has his eyes set on an elusive Tour de France title.
However, Roglič crashed out of the Giro earlier this year — a depressingly default position for the former ski jumper in recent years — and is likely to struggle to back up sufficiently to offer a real challenge this time around.
What of his other challengers? João Almeida, who won three stages and the overall title at the Tour de Suisse last month, is Pogačar's chief support rider but will be more than happy to step up should any mishap befall his leader.
The same could be said of Roglič's German domestique Florian Lipowitz, who finished a solid third at the Dauphiné.
The overall general classification may be a two-horse race, but the final spot on the podium is more than up for grabs, particularly for Ben O'Connor.
The 29-year-old West Australian will be Jayco AlUla's first home-grown overall challenger in the 12 years since the team was founded as Green Edge.
It will be his fourth Tour de France and 11th overall grand tour.
He has won a stage in each of those grand tours, including at last year's Vuelta a España, when he wore the leaders red jersey for a record 13 stages before finishing second to Roglič while riding for Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale.
O'Connor then won the silver medal at the 2024 World Championships behind Pogačar, capping a superb year in which he also finished fourth at the Giro d'Italia.
"The Tour de France is the biggest race in the world, and I'll be proud to lead the team," O'Connor said.
"Hopefully we can come out the other end in Paris with a really sweet result.
"I think it will be interesting to see how an Aussie goes in an Aussie team, fighting all the way to Paris for the [general classification].
"It's something I'm really looking forward to, something I'm really proud of, and something I also want to promote for cycling in Australia."
O'Connor will have fellow Australian riders Luke Plapp and Eddie Dunbar — both riding their first Tours de France — as support in the mountains, with road captain and Australian champion Luke Durbridge hoping to use his experience to guide the squad to the front of the field.
Plapp comes into the race off a maiden grand tour stage win at this year's Giro, while Dunbar claimed two stage wins at last year's Vuelta.
"We have a really versatile team and I've performed well in grand tours in the past so I'll do everything I can to get back to the top five," O'Connor said.
"It's always an exciting time. It's the biggest race, and biggest stress, but it's also the biggest reward.
"The route is a race of two halves. You have northern France with some extremely punchy stages and then pretty much, from stage 10 onwards, all of climbs are 30 minutes to one hour long.
"There are some really big cols and passes, so I think that's where I will be enjoying the race a lot more — they're the kind of mountain stages I really prefer.
"For me, it'll be about getting through the first half and then executing in the second half."
There are 10 Aussies on the start list for this year's Tour de France.
The Tour will take place entirely in France this year, the first time that has happened since 2020.
The route will cover 3,320km with around 51,550m of elevation gain over the course of the three weeks.
On the 50th anniversary of the polka dot mountains jersey there are five mountain top finishes on storied climbs such as the Hautacam, Luchon-Superbagnères, Mont Ventoux, Courchevel Col de la Loze and La Plagne.
The finale of the race also returns to Paris after last year's Olympic Games forced a change to tradition and a finish in Nice for the first time in the race's history.
The Olympics still has an impact on this year's route though, with three ascents of the Côte de la Butte Montmartre, where the dramatic Olympic road race played out in front of an estimated half a million spectators.
It will finish on the famous Champs Élysées, 50 years after the first instance of it doing so.
The Tour de France will be shown live on SBS throughout its three-week duration, with highlights on every morning from 7:00am.
This year's Tour de France Femmes gets underway on July 26 in Brittany, just as the men's tour concludes in Paris.
The race will take place over nine stages over 1,165km — the longest ever for the event in its fourth year, with 17,240m total elevation.
Starting in Vannes in the France's west, the race will finish in the eastern town of Châtel in the high Alps.
Last year, Poland's Kasia Niewiadoma claimed a stunning victory over Dutch rider Demi Vollering by just four seconds in one of the all-time great stage races in cycling history.
Sarah Gigante was Australia's highest-ranked finisher, seven minutes and nine seconds down.