Tadej Pogacar ruled over the 2025 Tour de France unchallenged, to the point of letting boredom creep in. Supremacy, when it faces no opposition, quickly becomes routine. During the final stage of this 112th edition, between Mantes-la-Ville and Paris on Sunday, July 27, one rival, Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), finally managed to crack this undisputed reign. The Slovenian could have ended these three weeks of racing with another victory. He could have become the first yellow jersey since Bernard Hinault in 1982 to raise his arms in triumph on the Champs-Elysรฉes.
But the 30-year-old Belgian took a solo win, pulling away on the steepest gradients of Rue Lepic, under pouring rain and on slippery cobblestones. “He was incredibly strong,” acknowledged the leader of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, who ultimately finished fourth, 19 seconds behind the day’s winner.
Sunday made clear that a champion only truly fulfills himself when threatened. All it took was a day with little at stake โ in which the general classification times were frozen 50.3 kilometers from the finish due to rain โ for something resembling a battle to finally emerge, after a week in which Pogacar seemed to have lost his appetite for victory.
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