All Things 2025 Tour de France

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Ogie Ogilthorpe

Ogie Ogilthorpe

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Rosters are starting to trickle out for each of the teams that will be competing in the 2025 race this year.

The obvious choice, Tadej Pogacar, has a really strong team behind him, although I would almost give the Visma-Lease A Bike team helping Jonas Vingegaard the nod for being a little stronger. Visma is fielding a very, very strong team in support of Jonas this year, a ridiculously strong team actually.

Going to be hard to get super excited early in the race as it sounds like there is not much for mountain/climbing stages in the first 9 days (I'll have to check the route again), the first real mountain stage being Stage 10.

Everyone will be looking at the top two but I would expect Remco Evenepoel to be better than he was in his somewhat disappointing Giro performance last month and it will be interesting to watch the Red Bull Bora (RBH) team with the always dangerous Primoz Roglic and the young and upcoming German Florian Lipowitz, who surprised by finishing on the podium in the Dauphine.
 

Ouch.

Nasty crash on an intermediate sprint on Stage 3 today that took out the Green Jersey, Jasper Philipsen who had to abandon the race and be transported to the hospital. It'll be interesting to see any fallout and where they find the fault. It looked like the fault could be at least somewhat shared between Bryan Coquard (Cofidis Team) and Laurenz Rex (Intermarche Team).

Sucks to have one of the more animated and talented bike riders knocked out of the entire race on just Stage 3. It had to be pretty bad as they announced he was out of the race VERY quickly.

Jasper Philipsen Out of Tour de France After Heavy Crash
 


fan of Ray Williams said:
Another good finish today.
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Pogacar wins again, racking up another Stage win and they're not even in the mountains. Pogacar out-sprinting VanderPoel is ridiculously impressive.

Another less than great day for Primoz Roglic. At 35 years old, I'm just not sure if his heart is in it, based on his performance at the Giro and just this year overall. Too bad, I was hoping he could push the top 2 one last time in this year's Tour. It's early, but he keeps losing time.

Awesome to see Matteo Jorgenson continue to look strong to represent the Americans at the TDF. He's basically Vingegaaard's super-domestique but he's an incredibly strong rider, and sits in 4th place overall after 4 Stages. Good for him!!!
 



The Time Trial tomorrow is going to be absolutely fantastic. The TT experts, most obviously Remco, are going to light up the GC top 10. I can see Remco moving from where he is now, 9th overall in the GC, to as high as 4th or even 3rd. I'd be shocked if anyone came within a minute of his time, or at least 45-50 seconds gap.

Looking forward to a complete reshaping of the GC top 10.
 


fan of Ray Williams said:
Frickin’ Pogacar is great in the Time Trail also. Unreal
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I didn't expect him to come so close to matching Remco, especially after he had a bad time trial at the Dauphine last month. Pretty impressive. Some guys moved up today but some guys lost a LOT of time. Primoz Roglic continues to have a lackluster TDF, although we're still several days away from any of the mountain stages and I expect him to move up as that goes on.

Tomorrow could be exciting, a brutal stage and it's not even a mountain stage. Does UAE push the tempo and try to put Pogacar in line for a stage win or do they let conserve energy for the remaining 2+ weeks of racing and let a breakaway go for the stage win?

The tactical thing to do would probably be to just let the breakaway go and stay at the front of the peleton and keep Pogacar's lead, but Damn; Pogacar loves to race his bike. He could say, fuck that, let's go.
 




Side note... always looking at upcoming young riders who could make a dent.

Young French rider from Arkea-BNB, Kevin Vauquelin is making himself a shitload of money right now. He's going to be signing with someone else for next season and he's had a really good Tour, and a really good last 12+ months. The Netflix series, Tour de France Unchained, did a short piece on him in one of the recent episodes. Seems like a really good dude, grounded.

Not a bad day for the US as far as cycling goes. Ben Healy wins the Stage today for EF Education, an American team headquartered in Boulder, CO. And on top of that, American Quinn Simmons, who has been riding at the front of the peleton for most of the TDF so far, takes 2nd today for Lidl-Trek (Go TREK!!!)
 

fan of Ray Williams said:
What a breakaway by Healy. Geeze!
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Another shit day for GC contender Primoz Roglic; he even managed to lose another 5 seconds to the GC group that coasted in over 5 minutes behind Healy.

At this point, they should just start riding for the young German, Florian Lipowitz. It's a tough call, I mean Roglic is going to perform in the mountains, I'd be shocked if he didn't, but his heart just doesn't seem to be in it. If he crashes at any point in the next couple weeks, I would bet he bows out no matter how serious the injury is. It sucks, I'm a Roglic fan
 






It's nice to see this thread. I am should have known Ogie would set something up. Loved the break away win by Healy the other day. I don't keep close track of the various teams, but I do enjoy watching the Tour and then later, La Vuelta. Bike racing may be the most impressive of all sports. A couple days back the winner averaged over 35 mph and reached 45 mph at the final sprint. That's just insane and elite athleticism.
I was sad to see Jasper Philipsen taken down when he was riding so well.
Here's to a great Tour!
 

FinnGopher said:
It's nice to see this thread. I am should have known Ogie would set something up. Loved the break away win by Healy the other day. I don't keep close track of the various teams, but I do enjoy watching the Tour and then later, La Vuelta. Bike racing may be the most impressive of all sports. A couple days back the winner averaged over 35 mph and reached 45 mph at the final sprint. That's just insane and elite athleticism.
I was sad to see Jasper Philipsen taken down when he was riding so well.
Here's to a great Tour!
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I can't get excited for the sprint stages (today and tomorrow). It just doesn't do anything for me. But Monday will be entertaining as hell, then the rest day, then it will get fantastic the rest of the way.

Pogacar seems unbeatable, but Jonas has a stronger team and Jonas apparently is hitting numbers for power that he never has before, in incredible shape. To top things off, I guess there's a pretty good reason Vingegaard was less than impressive in the Time Trial, but Visma isn't saying publicly. One of the pods I was listening to talked about a bad marriage/combination between crank length and chain ring size, really made it hard for Vingegaard to spin at the cadence he wanted to.

I've tinkered with some different crank lengths and chain rings; i like a shorter crank arm length (165mm or 167.5mm on most of my bikes), longer can be hard on the knees. I've also gone down a LITTLE bit on chain ring size; Standard, 53X39; Compact 50X34; On almost all my bikes, I put a 52X36, right in the middle. Too much elevation gain in the LV valley to run a Standard but when I'm in any remote descent, the Compact just doesn't have enough.

Going to be a great rest of the TDF!!! Looking forward to see who's left standing in a few weeks among all the "secondary" players; Remco, Florian Lipowitz, Roglic, Oscar Onley, America's Matteo Jorgenson, et al.
 


fan of Ray Williams said:
Dang! MVDP was caught. Thought maybe, just maybe, he could hang on.
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Hell of a run at a stage win. It was over when he lost his teammate late in the breakaway, but he made it fun to watch.

So rare when a breakaway like that materializes, but I’m always cheering for one to break through.
 

fan of Ray Williams said:
Dang! MVDP was caught. Thought maybe, just maybe, he could hang on.
Click to expand...
Unregistered User said:
Hell of a run at a stage win. It was over when he lost his teammate late in the breakaway, but he made it fun to watch.

So rare when a breakaway like that materializes, but I’m always cheering for one to break through.
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I was really hoping he was going to hold them off. Hard not to root for MVDP, just an incredible overall bike rider. I'm sure he made it a lot closer than some of the Sprint teams wanted it to be. I would have to think his legs will be jelly tomorrow, hanging at the back of the peloton

Tomorrow will be a great race, heading into the rest day
 

Ogie Ogilthorpe said:
I can't get excited for the sprint stages (today and tomorrow). It just doesn't do anything for me. But Monday will be entertaining as hell, then the rest day, then it will get fantastic the rest of the way.

Pogacar seems unbeatable, but Jonas has a stronger team and Jonas apparently is hitting numbers for power that he never has before, in incredible shape. To top things off, I guess there's a pretty good reason Vingegaard was less than impressive in the Time Trial, but Visma isn't saying publicly. One of the pods I was listening to talked about a bad marriage/combination between crank length and chain ring size, really made it hard for Vingegaard to spin at the cadence he wanted to.

I've tinkered with some different crank lengths and chain rings; i like a shorter crank arm length (165mm or 167.5mm on most of my bikes), longer can be hard on the knees. I've also gone down a LITTLE bit on chain ring size; Standard, 53X39; Compact 50X34; On almost all my bikes, I put a 52X36, right in the middle. Too much elevation gain in the LV valley to run a Standard but when I'm in any remote descent, the Compact just doesn't have enough.

Going to be a great rest of the TDF!!! Looking forward to see who's left standing in a few weeks among all the "secondary" players; Remco, Florian Lipowitz, Roglic, Oscar Onley, America's Matteo Jorgenson, et al.
Click to expand...
Love it. At one point I really should try different setups.
 

Seven (7) Cat 2 climbs tomorrow. Holy shit. If it were later in the TDF, I would expect even more of a bloodbath, guys getting dropped all over the place, early and often, but it's hard to say how hard many of the teams are going to push it?

UAE and Pogacar losing top climbing domestique Joao Almeida is a huge, huge loss for Pogacar. Three broken ribs I think, and he still made a go of it until abandoning finally.

Tomorrow we'll finally also get to see just what kind of shape American Sepp Kuss is in for Visma and Vingegaard. He's been invisible for most of the TDF so far, hanging out at the back of the peloton. Hopefully he's just conserving energy because he's an important piece for Vingegaard once they get in the mountains.

Should be fun. The GC Top 10 ranking by the end of the day, compared to the beginning, will look like a bomb went off.
 

Simon Yates with the stage win and Ben Healy gets the yellow.
Appears that Jonas might be able to stay with Tadej. (Might also be wishful thinking on my part.)
 
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fan of Ray Williams said:
Simon Yates with the stage win and Ben Healy gets the yellow.
Appears that Jonas might be able to stay with Tadej. (Might also be wishful thinking on my part.)
Click to expand...

Very impressive TDF so far for Healy, and the American team EF Education!! USA!!

Hard to take much from today between Tadej and Jonas? Neither worked SUPER hard today. Happy to see both Red Bull guys, Lipowitz and Roglic hang with the first group and the youngster Oscar Onley, the young Brit. He's had an impressive year so far
 


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