Tadej Pogačar aims for a record-equalling fifth win, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel line up with green lights for their form and health, Florian Lipowitz is back after the podium finish last year while Isaac del Toro and Paul Seixas bring carefree promise.
The Route
This is a back-loaded Tour. All grand tours aim to build to a crescendo but this year the Pyrenees are tackled early and we’ll wait for the third weekend with Stages 14, 15 and after the rest the Stage 16 time trial to shape the overall before a fierce pair of stages finishing on Alpe d’Huez on Stages 19 and 20. There are 10-6-4 second time bonuses at the stage finish.
A reminder that all stages, the rules and more are one page at inrng.com/tour
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is the prime pick. He bids to become the fifth rider to win the Tour five times and there’s not the wisp of a cloud on the horizon of his ambitions. He seems unbeatable – he hasn’t lost a stage race since the 2023 Tour – and crucially his rivals often believe it, settling for second as their best available result. He can win from many situations, from reduced group sprints to time trials to summit finishes, and if he’s thirty seconds down on Vingegaard after Stage 20, he could even reverse this on the cobbles of Montmartre. The form is there as his recent Tour de Suisse stage showed. Any weak points? Fetch a microscope. With hindsight he might have been beatable last year given he later revealed a knee injury. This time his team are not the best for the opening team time trial and he’s prone to bold attacks than often pay off but may not always – Amstel Gold Race in 2025 – and seems to need stimulation from rivals to be at his best. With luck he and we’ll be boosted by what his rivals are offering this time.
Isaac del Toro just won the Aura Tour and comfortably so. He showed in the Giro last year he can last three weeks and has reconned the key stages of the Tour with Pogačar, the apprentice alongside the master. Pogačar has gifted wins to team mates before but think a stage rather than a fifth Tour de France and the Mexican’s relative weakness seems to be time trials but the Evian-Thonon stage this year has a sustained climb which suits. There’s a strong chance he’s on the podium in Paris.
Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) comes to the Tour after winning the Giro, and taking Paris-Nice and the Volta Catalunya, and before all that the Vuelta too. Above all this means a clear run with all his injuries a distant memory. He rode the Giro partly because he got trounced at the Tour last year. This is his paradox, consistently better than all the rest, except for Pogačar where the magnifying effect of the Tour de France makes him look like perpetual runner-up but last year he had his moments, he even put Pogačar under pressure in the third week. It’s unlikely the Giro triumph liberates him as we did not discover a new side to his racing, rather the economy of his victory means he’s not fatigued. He even says he’s better than ever, but a year ago at the Dauphiné he said his power numbers were better than ever, only he was beaten by Pogačar. He’s got a whole team in support, they’ll miss Wout van Aert who is capable of getting Vingegaard out of tricky situations. As things stand he looks a likely runner-up again but with the hope he can push Pogačar hard in the third week and see what happens.
Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) starts a crunch Tour for him. Hired on big money as Tour contender, he’s had a clear run to the race, including skipping racing since April. But is he really a Tour contender? He’ll need a quantum change to out-climb Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, and now younger riders are queuing to overtake him too. But he is looking razor lean and has been preparing for just this. Some of his best wins have come about from surprise attacks, taking a gap and then being almost impossible to reel in and if he could deploy rather than hoping to win a summit finish shoot-out then he could cause an upset but there are few mountain stages valley roads to suit, this could land him a stage win more than the yellow jersey. If you’re or he is superstitious the Tourmalet – his nemesis in the 2023 Vuelta and the 2025 Tour – comes early and should be an easier hurdle to clear.
Florian Lipowitz was third last year, albeit eleven minutes down but the best of the rest behind Pogačar and Vingegaard thanks to consistency. He seems to trundle around like an impervious armoured vehicle but also the proverbial diesel who follows but rarely shapes the race. He’s still searching for his first World Tour level win. The 25 year old’s racecraft is still a work-in-progress, he dropped the field going uphill in the recent Tour of Slovenia but was hesitant on the ensuing descent. It’ll be intriguing to see how he and Evenepoel fare together, the sense is that Evenepoel is boosted by this internal competition but maybe prove brittle if overtaken.
Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM) is the youngest rider to start the Tour de France since 1937. The 19 year old had an excellent spring campaign that saw him second in the Strade Bianche, dominate the Tour of the Basque Country and win the Flèche Wallonne before being the only rider willing or able to match Pogačar in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. On the team’s whiteboard the first goal is to finish the race, the second is get the best GC result possible. It’s this challenge that is open, a field of dreams for him and fans. He’s shown glimpses that suggest he’s going to be a contender someday soon. His teenage erreur de jeunesse on a descent in the Aura Tour last month cost him plenty, from a shot at victory to skin on his palms that required daily bandages and missed training. But this has dampened hype around the ace. Back in April he was still discovering how he fared when going all in for a one week stage race so a grand tour is going to be an adventure. One of his talents seems to be able to go very deep to win or follow rivals but this could cost him, whether the following day or week later.
Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) as a Tour winner? Surely not this time and the goal is more like Seixas: to finish and do the best on GC possible but his team are spending big these days and need results at the Tour including some proof that Ayuso is a potential podium contender. Results could come on the opening day, it could be via Mads Pedersen mid-race but Ayuso is the spear tip. Mattias Skjelmose is an extra option for the team but seems a step below.
Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) feels like a human scratchcard, you never know what you are going to get each time. Capable of toying with Pogačar on the right course, and finishing on the podium in the Vuelta last summer, he’s having a great season in terms of results and seems to be enjoying it with the Tour as the goal all along. But GC or stage wins? Presumably he’ll aim for the former and pivot to the latter if he’s outside the top-5 once a hierarchy is established but from breakaways he could haul himself higher up GC again.
Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easypost) is capable of a top-10 finish on GC but he and his team know that this is not a valuable or visible result beyond the UCI points they need, instead a stage win or the mountains competition is more suitable.
Cian Uijtdebroeks (Movistar) has changed teams several times but he’s only 23 as he makes his Tour debut and like others will aim to see how far he can go on GC. The terror of the pressroom for those tasked with spelling his name correctly first time, he finished a steady seventh in the recent Aura Tour saying he’d work on sharpening his climbing. His team have plenty of stage hunters so the pressure isn’t all on him.
Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain) is flying below the radar, second in the UAE Tour this year showed he could climb well but he’s been discreet since, including the recent Tour de Suisse but the Tour has been the goal all along although he’ll find team mates busy aiming for other things. Ben O’Connor (Jayco) tried to go for GC last time but it didn’t work, then ended up winning the “Queen Stage” and finished 11th for some UCI points, the team would probably sign for the same again. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) was sixth last year and has consistently been in the top-10 in stage races this year and while the field is deeper can hope to do the same again while other team mates try to pick off a stage win again. Netcompany-Ineos don’t have an obvious GC contender so a top-10 might be possible for Egan Bernal, Kévin Vauquelin or Thymen Arensman but would they settle for 8th or prefer 12th and a stage win? The talk is of the latter, getting more noticeable results rather than the habitual GC quest.
 |
Pogačar |
 |
Vingegaard |
 |
Del Toro |
 |
Seixas, Evenepoel, Lipowitz |
 |
– |
It’s a tedious time being a cycling fan.
Until the other riders get the preparation UAE and Gianetti provide, it’s not even a contest. Worst of all, we will never know the truth because of the UCI.
Have you as a recreational rider or amateur rider ever come across a Pro racer, and noticied the huge gap between you and them? That’s the same gap between Pro Racers and Pogi.
Unbelieveable.
But thanks for sticking to it, INRNG. Some day perhaps there will be excitement again.
It feels like the Tour has a very deep field of GC contenders this year on paper. The reality is though that there will be one clear winner, and one contender, and we already know who they will be. The rest, though very capable riders, will either race for 3rd – 10th or realise early on it isn’t happening and try and snipe stage wins. If Pogacar is in the mood though, there might not be too many of those available either.
Thanks for the preview.
Lipowitz to finish above Evenepoel. Lip 3rd; Eve out of the top 10, having dropped out of GC contention with a bad day in the mountains, and thus decided to go for stages. (And maybe he – and his team – will finally accept that he is not going to be a top GT rider because he just doesn’t have it in the long mountains, whereas he could be an awesome one-day rider, including at the Ronde and Paris-Roubaix.)
Lipowitz’ll finish second, above Vingegaard this year. Seixas will be surprised by the relentless intensity and shift to targeting a stage win by the end. Pogacar will want to win the Paris stage in Yellow, overall his tour will be unusually conservative, not explosive. Evenepoel will be Evenepoel and Pidcock will have a decent top-10 tour but never look happy about being there. Del Toro will show lots of potential but make questionable tactical decisions.