Key Takeaways: Tour de France Stage 11

Breaking down what we learned on a scorching-fast post rest-day stage at the 2025 Tour de France

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On a post-rest-day stage that highlighted the ultra-aggressive iteration of racing currently on display at the Tour de France, Uno-X Mobility’s Jonas Abrahamsen delivered a monster Cinderella wire-to-wire victory after taking the lead from the moment the flag dropped and powering through the ochre-tinged patchwork farmland around the southern French city of Toulouse to hold off some of the sport’s biggest and strongest Classics stars. Behind the GC battle raged on, with the peloton never relenting in its pace, and splits in the group constantly forming and regrouping, before things took a dramatic twist late in the day when pre-race favorite Tadej Pogačar crashed a few kilometers before the finish line. While he was able to finish without losing time due to his rivals sitting up and waiting for him to rejoin, the crash raised fresh questions about the race’s balance of power just as it heads into the high mountains tomorrow.

Stage Top Five:
1) Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility) +0
2) Mauro Schmid (Jayco AlUla) +0
3) Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +7
4) Arnaud De Lie (Lotto) +53
5) Wout van Aert (Visma | Lease a Bike) +53

Current GC Top Five:
1) Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) +0
2) Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +29
3) Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) +1’29
4) Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) +1’46
5) Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) +2’06

Stage 11 Race Notebook

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157km-to-go: Right as the flag is dropped to signal the start of the day, Uno-X’s Jonas Abrahamsen attacks. He is followed by a heads-up Mauro Schmid, and XDS-Astana’s Davide Ballerini.

154.7km: With Abrahamsen drilling it on the front, the three leaders hold a small, 11-second gap on the peloton, which is full of riders attacking constantly in an attempt to join the trio.

108.9km-91.2km: While their gap builds out to over a minute as the peloton appears to calm down, it is quickly pegged back again to just 18 seconds when the bunch is strung out with another series of attacks. This allows Fred Wright and Mathieu Burgaudeau to bridge across.

66.3km: With the gap to this front never growing out to more than a minute, there is constant attacking from the peloton in an attempt to bridge across. At one point, even Jonas Vingegaard gets in on the attacking, hitting the front, in what I presume to be an attempt to catch out Tadej Pogačar. Unfortunately for him, both Evenepoel and Pogačar are able to respond.

64.5km: Capitalizing on the chaos and hard pace, Quinn Simmons presses the issue and forges clear with Axel Laurance, while a group of Arnaud de Lie, Mathieu van der Poel, and Wout van Aert bridges up behind. They are just over a minute behind the lead group.

25.4km-19.7km: Even as the riders up front keep the pace high by rotating through, the powerful chase group slowly eats into their lead, getting within 19 seconds.

14.8km: With the chase group within 12 seconds of the leaders on the penultimate climb, Quinn Simmons attacks, presumably thinking he can bridge across and get clear of faster sprinters like Van Aert and Van der Poel before the finish line.

14km: Up front, Abrahamsen attacks, with Schmid the only rider from the breakaway able to follow.

10.3km: After the two leaders (Schmid & Abrahamsen) get over the climb, they are able to extend their gap on the chasers on the flat section between climbs due to the presence of multiple motos and cars in the lead convoy, as well as the camera moto, are giving them a slight draft, increasing their speed just enough to extend their gap.

8.9km: On the ultra-steep final climb, the chasers reel in Quinn Simmons just as Van der Poel unleashes a searing attack. But, up ahead, the two leaders crest the climb with the gap at 32 seconds.

6km: When the GC group hits the same steep climb, after a few attacks at the base, Jonas Vingegaard launches an attack near the summit, but is closely marked by both Evenepoel and Pogačar.

4.2km: Coming into the final few kilometers, Pogačar makes the mistake of taking his right hand off his handlebars, leaving him unable to adjust when Tobias Halland Johannessen moves directly into his front wheel, causing him to crash awkwardly into the curb.

3.3km-1.8km: Pogačar looks set to lose time, but the GC group ahead, not wanting to be seen profiting off Pogačar’s misfortune, sits up and waits for him to rejoin.

200m: Ahead, Van der Poel has closed down the two leaders and is quickly closing in on them in the final few hundred meters. Schmid appears to blink first, leading Abrahamsen into the sprint.

Finish: Abrahamsen is able to leverage his superior position to come around Schmid for the biggest win of his career and the first-ever Tour stage win for his Uno-X team. Unfortunately, we don’t get a great camera angle of the benchmark win due to a protester storming the finish.

Three Key Takeaways