Three Initial Takeaways: Tour de France 2025 Route Reveal
A detailed course breakdown and a few initial takeaways from the recently-release 2025 Tour de France route
The Tour de France organizers, ASO, revealed the route for the 2025 Tour de France yesterday in Paris. With the event lacking its usual lineup of sporting stars, the route took center stage, with major highlights like the return to the northern edge of the country for nearly the entire first half of the event, the Pyrenees in week two, including a time trial on the brutally steep slopes to Peyragudes, and a brutal third week, with a summit finish atop Mont Ventoux on Stage 16 and Col de la Loze on Stage 18, which, with 5,550 meters (18,000+ ft) of climbing, serves up one of the hardest mountain stages in modern Tour history. With significant time spent in the northwest, nearly two weeks before the first mountain stage, two time trials, and a return to the Champs-Élysées Stage 21 finish in Paris, the 2025 Tour de France looks like a return to a far more traditional format.
However, don’t let these initial impressions deceive you; with ten uphill finishes and a complete lack of downhill runs to the line, the 2025 edition of the race will pack plenty of excitement, even in the north, which features small, winding roads, ample explosive uphill finishes, and crosswinds. Even if the GC battle, which could be both opened and shut between Stages 12 and 13, lacks suspense, ASO has set the race up to produce endless interesting and, hopefully, thrilling battles for stage wins against the sport's top one-day superstars (including Tadej's Pogačar).
Check out a course detail deep-dive and three initial takeaways below:
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2025 Tour de France Route Overview:
2025 Tour de France Full Stage List
Stage 1: Lille Métropole>Lille Métropole (185km)-flat
Stage 2: Lauwin-Planque>Boulogne-sur-Mer (212km)-hilly
Stage 3: Valenciennes>Dunkerque (178km)-flat
Stage 4: Amiens Métropole>Rouen (173km)-hilly
Stage 5: Caen>Caen (33km)-individual time trial
Stage 6: Bayeux>Vire Normandie (201km)-hilly
Stage 7: Saint-Malo>Mûr-de-Bretagne Guerlédan (194km)-hilly
Stage 8: Saint-Méen-le-Grand>Laval Espace Mayenne (174km)-flat
Stage 9: Chinon>Châteauroux (170km)-flat
Stage 10: Ennezat>Le Mont-Dore Puy de Sancy (163km)-mountains w/summit finish
July 15th: Rest Day #1 in Toulouse
Stage 11: Toulouse>Toulouse (154km)-flat
Stage 12: Auch>Hautacam (181km)-mountains w/summit finish
Stage 13: Loudenvielle>Peyragudes (11km)-individual time trial w/summit finish
Stage 14: Pau>Luchon-Superbagnères (183km)-mountains w/summit finish
Stage 15: Muret>Carcassonne (169km)-hilly
July 21st: Rest Day #2 in Montpellier
Stage 16: Montpellier>Mont Ventoux (172km)-mountains w/summit finish
Stage 17: Bollène>Valence (161km)-flat
Stage 18: Vif>Courchevel Col de la Loze (171km)-mountains w/summit finish
Stage 19: Albertville>La Plagne (130km)-mountains w/summit finish
Stage 20: Nantua>Pontarlier (185km)-hilly
Stage 21: Mantes-la-Ville>Paris Champs-Élysées (120km)-flat
Breakdown by Stage Type:
7 mountain stages*
7 summit finishes
1 time trial
7 flat(ish) stages
6 hilly stages
2 time trials
44 total kilometers
11 climbing kilometers
*The total above amounts to 22 since the second time trial is also counted as a mountain stage
Individual Time Trial Kilometers
The course includes two individual time trials for a total of 44 kilometers, which is below average for recent editions.
With 11 of those kilometers taking place on a mountain pass, this leaves little room for flat time trial specialists to build up an advantage on superior climbers like Pogačar and Vingegaard.
Vertical Meters Gained
With an estimated 51,550 meters of climbing (for an average of roughly 2,500m/8,000ft of elevation gain per stage), the 2025 route is slightly ‘easier’ than recent editions through the full three weeks, but this mostly due to the large amount of time spent in the flatlands in the north of the country.
In fact, if we account for the low number of flat time trial kilometers, the 2025 Tour is incredibly climb-focused and scores high on the BTP course difficulty rating.
Past Winner List, Specialty & Course Difficulty Rating:
2010: Alberto Contador, climber, 8.32
2011: Cadel Evans, hybrid climber/time trialist, 11.98
2012: Bradley Wiggins, time trialist, 5.03
2013: Chris Froome, hybrid climber/time trialist, 7.8
2014: Vincenzo Nibali, climber, 9.41
2015: Chris Froome, hybrid climber/time trialist, 34.7
2016: Chris Froome, hybrid climber/time trialist, 9.88
2017: Chris Froome, hybrid climber/time trialist, 13.27
2018: Geraint Thomas, hybrid climber/time trialist, 15.48
2019: Egan Bernal, climber, 19.36
2020: Tadej Pogačar, hybrid climber/time trialist, 16.36
2021: Tadej Pogačar, hybrid climber/time trialist, 8.90
2022: Jonas Vingegaard, hybrid climber/time trialist, 9.22
2023: Jonas Vingegaard, hybrid climber/time trialist 25.4
2024: Tadej Pogačar, hybrid climber/time trialist, 9.0
2025: ?, 11.79While this is an interesting prism in which to look at the course ratings, we should note that the rise of Pogačar, who is good across all disciplines, and Vingegaard, who can both climb and time trial at a level superior to almost any other rider, means that they would be the heavy favorites no matter the course.
Three Initial Takeaways
1) The course marks a return to a traditional format: After years of neglect, the cycling-mad northwest of the country, Hauts-de-France, Normandy, and Brittany, are heavily featured.
The significant amount of time spent up north will mean lots of tough racing on small roads in windy conditions with punchy climbs through the first rest day.
This has the potential to throw a wrench into the spokes of even the most well-planned GC campaign, and, in theory, means that the top favorites, Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar, could start the mountain stages with a time deficit built up during this period.
But, with Pogačar being a bonafide Classics superstar and with both him and Vingegaard having extremely strong support squads capable of keeping them positioned near the front, chances are that any chaotic racing will benefit them and penalize their competition.
This slow-roll opening of the race has the potential to serve up a series of hotly-contested sprints and multiple mini-Classics with the sport’s top one-day stars, but it also de-emphasizes General Classification battle.
For example, while Stage 5 technically serves up a GC set piece with a 33-kilometer time trial, the top three GC contenders, Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, and Remco Evenepoel, are all great time trialists, so any time gaps will likely be small (just like the Stage 7 time trial in 2024).
This means that the first significant GC set piece isn’t likely to come until the Stage 12 finish on Hautacam.
One surreal byproduct of this format is that the GC essentially starts on Stage 12 and could very well be wrapped up by Stage 18, if not as early as the Stage 13 mountain time trial.
This is potentially a hedge and an effort to create a viable sideshow for viewers in case of another lopsided Pogačar overall win.
2) The mountain stages feature multiple climbs where Jonas Vingegaard has dropped Tadej Pogačar in the recent past: The 2025 edition of the race has two summit finishes at places on the extremely small list of sites where Tadej Pogačar has been dropped, which is likely not an accident and is ASO’s attempt at serving up terrain where Pogačar can be theoretically challenged.
Mont Ventoux Stage 16: Vingegaard distanced Pogačar on the slopes of Mont Ventoux in 2021 before Pogačar leveraged his superior descending to catch back on during the descent.
Col de la Loze Stage 18: Even though they tackle the climb from the ‘easier’ Courchevel side, Stage 18 will finish on the monster climb, which tops out at 2,300m/7600ft, where Vingegaard hit Pogačar with a knockout blow in the 2023 edition of the race.
In addition, Stage 18, which goes over the massive Col du Glandon and Col de la Madeleine before finishing atop Loze, is one of the hardest days in modern Tour de France history, as judged by the total vertical meters gained.
However, as Pogačar proved in 2024, his days of being vulnerable on ultra-high kilojoule days on high-altitude climbs are over, and he won’t be as easily shaken on these climbs in 2025.
3) The overwhelming number of uphill finishes could make it impossible to challenge Pogačar: In contrast to recent years, the 2025 Tour has seven summit finishes (counting the time trial) and three explosive uphill finishes for a total of ten stages that finish up a significant gradient while lacking any downhill finishes.
While this theoretically helps Vingegaard since he lost significant time to Pogačar on downhills in the 2024 edition of the race, it also means that Pogačar, the defending champion, will have even more opportunities to leverage his superior ability uphill to win stages and increase his lead via time gaps and stage bonuses.
After all, Carlos Rodríguez only beat Pogačar on Stage 14 of the 2023 Tour due to the tactical battle that was introduced by the presence of a downhill run to the finish line in Morzine. Without significant course texture, the race is set up for yet another three-week exhibition from Pogačar.
In particular, the Stage 13 summit finish time trial at Peyragudes could allow Pogačar to build up an insurmountable advantage and let him play defense through the challenging alpine stages.
Even if he is challenged, the only rider who could realistically do so is two-time winner Jonas Vingegaard, who is the only rider with the necessary combination of time trialing and sustained climbing ability.
Of course, with so much time between now and the Grand Départ in Lille on July 5th, it would be silly to speculate too closely on the stage and overall contenders, but if they stay healthy, it is safe to assume that the 2025 edition will see yet another GC showdown between the sport’s top two stage racers, Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar.
While Remco Evenepoel has the potential to be the best of the rest once again, the 2024 season showed us that in order to challenge for the sport’s biggest victories when Pogačar is present, massive performance improvements must be made in the off-season.