The start of the 2025 Tour de France is just around the corner on Saturday July 5, with the last WorldTour preparation stage races at the Crtiérium du Dauphiné and Tour de Suisse in the rear-view mirror, and the final tune-ups at altitude camp now being completed.
The three big-name favourites for the Tour and the podium from last year’s race, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuckStep), all showed themselves at the French race, the pecking order seemingly the same as last July.
Pogačar was a cut above in the mountains, netting three stage wins and the yellow jersey, but it was only Vingegaard’s first race since March. A poor performance in the time trial for the Slovenian has left more than enough to expect a serious battle in July.
Can Remco Evenepoel improve and become a threat for more than third place? The young Belgian seems determined to try.
At the Tour de Suisse, Pogačar’s key climbing domestique João Almeida proved he’s still in flying form, mounting a thrilling comeback to snatch overall victory on the final stage, suggesting UAE’s team will be more than up to the challenge.
Vingegaard’s Tour team will similarly grow in strength, however, with Giro d’Italia champion Simon Yates, and Wout van Aert linking up with many of those from the Dauphiné to try and help the Dane claim a third maillot jaune.
A two-horse race between Pogačar and Vingegaard is still expected, having won the past five Tours between them, but other players have emerged at the recent stage races, and someone could be due a big step-up. But just how close are the rest of the opposition to upsetting the established hierarchy?
Here’s Cyclingews‘ latest form guide to the contenders for the 2025 Tour de France.
Table of Contents
Toggle1. Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)
Defending champion Tadej Pogačar will once again start as the favourite for the Tour de France, with his performances in 2025 only continuing to leave him at the top of the pile of contenders for cycling’s biggest race.
After his dominance at the 2024 race, Pogačar has only cemented his superiority over his rivals this season, most recently Jonas Vingegaard at the Critérium du Dauphiné. With three stage victories and his first overall title at the traditional pre-Tour form-marker, Pogačar is heading to the Tour in absolutely flying shape.
First came the surprise sprint win on day 1, ahead of the Dane out of a superstar breakaway, but his two mountain stage victories were much more significant. On return to Combloux, where Vingegaard dominated him in a time trial at the Tour de France two years prior, the world champion stamped his authority on the competition, putting 1:01 into Vingegaard after just a 20-minute climbing effort.
The next day, he surged away on the Queen stage to Valmeinier 1800, with enough in the tank to ease up at the line as Vingegaard seemingly worked much harder to try and just stay close. After a blip in the time trial, where he lost significant time to Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel, Pogačar confirmed that he would be starting this year’s Tour as favourite, looking quite invincible on the high ground for now.
At just 26, Pogačar will be eyeing a fourth yellow jersey triumph in 2025, which would see him draw level with Chris Froome for the fifth most Tour GC wins of all time. Everything we’ve seen so far this season suggests that is the likely outcome if his rivals cannot close the large gap that was present at the Dauphiné.
2. Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike)
For yet another year, Pogačar’s biggest rival will be Jonas Vingegaard. Winner of the Tour in 2022 and 2023, Vingegaard is one of the few riders who is able to beat Pogačar in Grand Tours, and he’ll be trying to turn Pogačar’s 3-2 lead at the Tour into a level score this July.
After the Dauphiné, where Vingegaard finished second to the Slovenian, he was definitely second fiddle to favourite Pogačar, but the eternal rivals look a lot closer than they were at this point in 2024, when Vingegaard was still on the road back from injury.
The Dane has still had the tougher run-in, suffering a concussion at Paris-Nice instead of racking up wins like Pogačar was in the spring, but at the Dauphiné, the pair were well-matched in terms of aggressiveness, but with Vingegaard still lacking something on the big climbs.
Vingegaard said after the Dauphiné that he thinks he still has room to improve, which may be wishful this close to the Tour, but isn’t completely impossible, and he still has some reinforcements to join his team, like Giro winner Simon Yates and Wout van Aert.
Pogačar may be the more prolific winner, especially this year, but let’s not forget that Vingegaard has beaten him in the Tour twice – it’s certainly not impossible, and Pogačar definitely doesn’t already have title number four sewn up.
Vingegaard will have to find something extra and hope to fatigue Pogačar as the race goes on, but he’s still a contender to win this Tour and will be the second protagonist in the GC.
3. Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep)
Having started the Critérium du Dauphiné saying his form was at a better place than it was this time last year, Remco Evenepoel’s stock among the favourites perhaps dropped the most after his eight days of racing in France.
Despite starting well by getting into the late attack on stage 1 alongside Pogačar, Vingegaard and Mathieu van der Poel, and showing exactly why he’s rated the best time trial rider in the world by dominating stage 4, Evenepoel’s performances in the mountains would have been a disappointment.
He was clearly the third-best climber at last year’s Tour, but this time, he was well away from the top two favourites, losing almost five minutes across the three final mountain stages. He was also outdone by young German Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who prevented a repeat of the Tour podium forming at the Dauphiné.
The Dauphiné time trial will remain the highlight, with Evenepoel’s big time gain on every rider putting him into yellow for a couple of days, and making the Tour’s fifth stage to Caen against the clock a huge key to Evenepoel finishing among the top spots as he did on debut last year.
It’s no crisis, with the Dauphiné’s finale coming well in advance of the Grand Départ. He has time to improve, but the climbing legs will need significant improvement if he is to aim higher than third.
Evenepoel also potentially lost another domestique in Louis Vervaeke, with Mikel Landa already ruled out from his Giro crash. As it stands, Evenepoel’s Tour support team will be the weakest among the favourites, hurting his chances further.
4. João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)
If the main question of this year’s Tour is ‘Who will win, Pogačar or Vingegaard?’ there’s also a secondary question: which of their domestiques will do best?
In recent years, it’s become common to see UAE Team Emirates-XRG or Visma-Lease a Bike domestiques finish in the top 10 or even on the podium of Grand Tours, and that’s not likely to change this year.The rider currently looking like they have the best shot of a top Tour finish is UAE’s João Almeida.
The Portuguese rider would be a Grand Tour leader at any other team, given he’s finished in the top 10 no fewer than six times already, but here he will support Tadej Pogačar. However, that doesn’t mean he can’t also finish well, like he did last year, taking fourth, or like his teammate Adam Yates, who landed on the podium in 2023.
Almeida is fresh off of winning the Tour de Suisse, where he won three stages, and that was his third consecutive GC win of the year after victories at the Tour de Romandie and Itzulia Basque Country.
In fact, he’s not finished lower than sixth in any of the six stage races he’s done this year, so it’s clear that the form is there. The question of how he ensures a high finish whilst also helping Pogačar may be tricky, but Almeida has done it before, and looks on track to do it again – it’s not even implausible to see him leapfrogging Evenepoel and contending for the podium.
5. Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe)
Primož Roglič will start his seventh Tour de France as somewhat of an unknown, having not raced in either of the Dauphiné or Tour de Suisse, and with his last race appearance being a DNF at the Giro d’Italia. As has been the story for many of his Tour bids, a series of crashes in Italy led to Roglič abandoning the race, with his GC challenge up in smoke.
Had he won the Giro, his status as a ‘favourite’ would be different, but with another crash-out, and him looking well away from his previous Grand Tour champion best, the gap from Roglič to Pogačar and his former teammate Vingegaard only appears to have grown.
Roglič does still have his Grand Tour history, as a four-time Vuelta winner, Giro champion and famous former Tour runner-up, to push him high up this list, however, and if he can avoid the crashes and chaos, then he should be well in the running for at least the podium.
He’s bounced back several times in his illustrious career at the Vuelta, after several DNFs from the Tour, so perhaps crashing out of the Giro will see him bounce back to his world-beating best at the Tour.
On his and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s side, too, is the rapid rise of Florian Lipowitz into one of the best GC prospects in the world, with the 24-year-old German looking set to start his first Tour as a key domestique and back-up GC option.
Only Pogačar and Vingegaard were better than him at the Dauphiné, and while a three-week race is vastly different to eight days, Lipowitz looks to have the tools required to contend at Grand Tours in the long term.
6. Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike)
If João Almeida takes the title of second-best GC rider at UAE, that title goes to Matteo Jorgenson at Visma-Lease a Bike.
That may seem surprising, seeing as Grand Tour winners Sepp Kuss and Simon Yates are also in the line-up, but it’s perhaps Jorgenson’s hunger – as a rider who hasn’t had a big result like that before – that could push him to a top finish this year. He finished eighth at the Tour last year, helping Vingegaard to second, and should be thinking about pushing that up a place or two this year.
Jorgenson won Paris-Nice for the second time in a row earlier this year, and after a strong but, results-wise, disappointing Classics campaign, went on to finish sixth at the Dauphiné, demonstrating again that he can finish well whilst also supporting Vingegaard.
More of a Grand Tour all-rounder than a pure climber, Jorgenson should seek to take advantage in the punchier stages and the two time trials, which should suit him well.
He’ll have to climb better in the high mountains, but if he can work for Vingegaard and then pace himself to not lose too much time, he could definitely be on track for a top finish.
Kuss and Yates are purer climbers, which should mean they can do more of the mountain domestique work, giving the American a little more freedom to think about his own GC as well as Vingegaard’s.
8. Enric Mas (Movistar)
Movistar’s Enric Mas may not be the flashiest GC contender, nor will he be come the start of the Tour, but he remains one of the most consistent racers over three weeks in the peloton, and will start his seventh Tour on July 5.
The Spanish GC rider’s best overall finish dates back to 2020, when he finished fifth, with his last three appearances ending in two DNFs and a 19th-place finish, but after all of those shortcomings, Mas followed it up with a top GC finish at La Vuelta a España.
In a similar fashion to Roglič, Mas will be hoping for good luck, and more importantly, his top-level to arrive in France, and his recent stage racing results suggest that the latter is on the way.
He too raced the Dauphiné, and while he was well away from the top favourites, he took seventh overall after a solid performance, with much of his time loss coming in the time trial. With only one flat race against the clock at the Tour, Mas should be able to focus his efforts on the mountain days and the uphill time trial on stage 13, which should suit his characteristics.
Grand Tour consistency has long been his biggest strength, and he’ll need to show it again if he is to return to the Tour de France GC top six, as he did in 2020 and 2021. It will be close between him and Carlos Rodríguez for the top Spanish finish.
8. Ben O’Connor (Jayco AlUla)
Ben O’Connor is heading to the Tour with big ambitions, but perhaps not the results to place him as far up the list of contenders as he’d probably like to be. The Australian is back targeting the Tour after racing the Giro and Vuelta last year and finishing fourth and second in those races, respectively.
Having moved to Jayco AlUla in the off-season, part of that decision was surely to have undisputed, well-supported leadership at the Tour, so there are big expectations on O’Connor’s shoulders – from himself and externally.
Unfortunately, his results so far this year have not been as good as they were last year. He missed out on the top 10 in both Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya, where many of his Tour rivals outperformed him, and whilst he did take seventh at the Tour de Suisse last week, he looked a step below the likes of winner Almeida.
O’Connor is certainly strong enough to finish on the podium of a Grand Tour; he’s proven that already, but if he’s not quite firing on all cylinders, especially against the quality at this race, he may find himself settling for a maximum top 10 this July.
O’Connor’s best Tour result is, of course, his fourth from 2021, where a breakaway stage win saw him rise up the ranking, and close out the third week strong enough to stay up there. On his return to the Tour, and after his successes last year, he’ll be eyeing up the top five.
9. Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale)
With the Tour GC contenders mostly converging at the Dauphiné, the Tour de Suisse hasn’t affected this list as much as it may have in previous years, but one rider whose stock it did raise was Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale).
The Austrian climber, back at the race where he fully announced himself to the WorldTour with a stage win two years ago, was one of the top performers, finishing fourth overall and with five stage top 10s out of eight.
His best performance was second on the final mountain time trial, where he beat everyone but the overall winner João Almeida, suggesting the Tour’s race against the clock up to Peyragudes will be a big day for Gall to show off his strengths.
After he won that Suisse stage in 2023, Gall went on to break through at his debut Tour de France by finishing eighth overall and winning one of the hardest mountain stages of the race to Courchevel, conquering the brutal Col de la Loze in the process.
Gall, unlike some who finished above him on GC in Switzerland, or possibly looked stronger at the Dauphiné, is higher up this list of favourites, mainly as he has the experience of finishing in the top 10 of a Grand Tour overall previously. Still just 27, he’s got more potential yet to unlock.
10. Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos Grenadiers)
Once the dominating team of the Tour de France, Ineos Grenadiers head to this race without a clear podium contender, and will instead likely look to former fifth-place finisher Carlos Rodríguez as their leader.
2018 Tour winner Geraint Thomas is set to make his final Tour appearance, and while he left the Tour de Suisse early due to a crash, he always liftd his game for the Grand Tours, shown as recently as last year’s Giro, where he finished third.
Rodríguez has racked up various big stage wins over the last couple of years and also cemented himself as a consistent top-10 finisher in stage races, including seventh and 10th in the Tour and Vuelta last year, after fifth at the Tour in 2023.
This year, he’s finished top 10 in three of the four stage races he’s done this year, most recently ninth at the Dauphiné, and he’s likely to finish around that spot in the Tour, too.
Thomas could still be a back-up GC option, but more likely will fit into a support role, alongside riders like Laurens De Plus and Michal Kwiatkowski.
11. Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek)
Mattias Skjelmose is a rider whose place on this list has been up for debate over the last few weeks. Winner of the Amstel Gold Race and fifth in the Vuelta a España last year, a couple of months ago the Dane was looking on a good path towards the Tour, but illness and injury has derailed his run-in, forcing him out of the Dauphiné and then also the back-up Tour de Suisse.
Until last week, he hadn’t raced since Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but he returned to action on Sunday at the Andorra MoraBanc Clàssica, not only taking part but winning the race in an uphill sprint. That win demonstrates that he’s not lost all his form through illness, and could come good at just the right time for the Tour’s key mountain stages, so given his previous achievements, he just about sneaks back into the list of contenders.
Skjelmose won’t have much climbing support throughout the three weeks, however, with significant Lidl-Trek resources being allocated to helping Jonathan Milan contest the sprints against Tim Merlier and Jasper Philipsen. This could see him isolated in comparison to those ranked higher.
Best of the rest
- Lenny Martinez – France’s next great hope has said he’s mainly targeting stage wins at this year’s Tour, but expect a GC campaign soon as ‘Project Lenny’ builds pace
- Oscar Onley – The Brit only got better throughout his third WorldTour season, performing especially well at the Tour de Suisse, but is yet to prove he can produce the same at Grand Tour level.
- Adam Yates – Previous podium finisher, so could well make it into the top 10 again as a domestique, but he was behind Almeida in UAE’s pecking order to help Pogačar chase overall victory last season.
- Simon Yates – First race back since winning the Giro, and similar to his twin, may be lower down in Vingegaard’s train of climbing train, with Jorgenson expected to be Visma’s last support man.
- Richard Carapaz – Would be a top contender, but after his Giro podium finish, has committed to defending his King of the Mountains jersey win and chasing another stage.
- Guillaume Martin – Always an option for the top 10, expect Guillaume Martin to be fighting away in breaks to better his GC position, having found great form after moving to Groupama-FDJ.
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