Tour de France 2025: The GC contenders form guide

Tadej Pogačar’s 2024 victory bears comparison with the most dominant in Tour de France history, just as his remarkable 2024 season was almost certainly the greatest sequence of performances across a calendar year since Eddy Merckx.

The world champion has continued in a similar vein in 2025, rattling off wins at the Tour of Flanders, Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Strade Bianche and the UAE Tour, while going very close indeed at Milan-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix and Amstel Gold Race. 

In other words, Pogačar continues to do Pogačar things, and as long as that remains the case, he will be the obvious favourite every time he pins on a race number. Backed by a deep UAE Team Emirates squad, the Slovenian has every reason in the world to believe that he will claim his fourth Tour title in Paris. The route suits him too – but then it always does. 

Only one man has ever beaten Pogačar at the Tour and, just to confirm it was no fluke, he’s done it twice. Jonas Vingegaard may have surrendered his Tour title last July, but he lost little in defeat given the life-threatening injuries he suffered at Itzulia Basque Country just three months earlier.

Vingegaard even managed to catch and beat Pogačar at Le Lioran midway through the Tour, and he made a duel of the race for two weeks before the Slovenian’s strength eventually told. That won’t deter Vingegaard unduly for 2025, given his previous track record against Pogačar in the white heat of July. The Dane beat Pogačar to yellow in 2022 and 2023, after all, and he broke even with him in the second half of the 2021 race to boot. 

After a winning start at the Volta ao Algarve, Vingegaard’s Spring campaign was again interrupted by a heavy crash, however, and his Team Visma | Lease a Bike squad is not the same imposing unit of two years ago. The Critérium du Dauphiné will reveal more about his prospects, but Vingegaard has repeatedly shown a knack for producing his best in July.

It’s a counter-intuitive thing to say about a man whose every move generates a cache of headlines in his native Belgium and beyond, but there’s an argument that Remco Evenepoel somehow remains underrated. That’s the trouble, of course, with racing in the Pogačar era.

Last year, Evenepoel claimed both gold medals at the Olympic Games and then added the time trial world title, but those achievements were utterly overshadowed by Pogačar’s season for the ages. Evenepoel’s Tour debut last year, meanwhile, was a remarkable one in itself, but again, it was eclipsed by the Pogačar show.

Although Evenepoel had already won a Vuelta a España, doubts persisted about his Grand Tour credentials, but his consistency en route to third at last year’s Tour should end that debate. Evenepoel still gives the impression of a rider with margin for improvement in the discipline, but it remains to be seen if this year’s progression will bring him any closer to Pogačar and Vingegaard, particularly as his season was delayed by his heavy training crash last December.

For some, Red Bull’s decision to send Primož Roglič to the Giro d’Italia this year was a concession that the Tour is now beyond him. For others, it was simply an attempt to replicate Pogačar’s 2024 approach by having a tilt at the corsa rosa double as a very public training exercise ahead of the Tour.

Whatever the original intent, Roglič endured an ill-starred Italian expedition, and he was forced to abandon after a spate of crashes. It hardly amounts to ideal preparation for the Tour, but he has shown himself to be most adept at bouncing back in situations such as these – witness his victory at least year’s Vuelta a España after his abandon at the Tour.

Roglič has endured unlimited heartache at the Tour, of course. In 2020, he lost a race he looked to have won at La Planche des Belles Filles on the final weekend, and each of his past three participations have been ended prematurely by crashes. The Slovenian is due some luck in July, but at 35, one wonders if his best days are beyond him.

To win the Tour against this Pogačar, Roglič can no longer manage the clock with his classic short, sharp efforts on hilltop finishes – ‘Roglification,’ as Daniel Friebe puts it. Instead, he will need to replicate the kind of aggression that carried him into the red jersey on the Alto de Moncalvillo on last year’s Vuelta. Easier said than done against this opposition. 

Almeida served as a deluxe domestique for Pogačar last July, but that didn’t prevent the Portuguese rider from helping himself to a fine 4th place overall in his Tour debut. He will be deployed in the same role this year – the UAE hierarchy isn’t up for debate – but on his 2025 form, he could well be in the mix for a podium spot if his duties allow it.

After narrowly losing out to Vingegaard at home roads on the Volta ao Algarve, Almeida won a stage at Paris-Nice and then claimed overall victory at both Itzulia Basque Country and the Tour de Romandie. 

A strong time trialist and a smart climber, Almeida cut his teeth as a stage racer with a string of fine displays at the Giro d’Italia, including two weeks in pink on his debut in 2020. He will warm up for July at the Tour de Suisse.

Carlos Rodríguez has developed the useful habit of producing his best form of the year in July and in the absence of stronger options, he will again line out as Ineos’ nominal team leader at the Tour, where Geraint Thomas makes his final appearance before retirement.

Ineos, however, is no longer the juggernaut that carried off seven Tours in eight years from 2012 to 2019, and even a podium finish is likely beyond Rodríguez’s ambition here. A repeat of his fifth-place finish of 2023 is a more realistic target for the Spaniard, who had to settle for 7th a year ago.

Rodríguez began 2025 with 6th overall at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, but his early season was ruined by a broken collarbone at the UAE Tour. He will hope his Tour preparation is back on track after a 6th-place finish at the Tour de Romandie.

Matteo Jorgenson can do a bit of everything and that makes him an invaluable cog at Team Visma | Lease a Bike. He proved to be Vingegaard’s most reliable support last July and he has been Visma’s most dependable performer thus far in a decidedly mixed campaign for the team.

The American claimed his second successive Paris-Nice crown in March, and he laboured diligently on Wout van Aert’s behalf on the cobbles. His thoughts have turned to the Tour since ending his Spring campaign at the Tour of Flanders, and he returns to action at the Critérium du Dauphiné, a race he won last year in Vingegaard’s absence.

This time out, Jorgenson will likely race the Dauphiné in support of Vingegaard, just as he will in July, but the American again looks likely to stay close on the general classification while fulfilling his domestique duties.

O’Connor’s breakout display at the Tour in 2021 was followed by two trying outings the following two Julys. That experience helped O’Connor to persuade his Decathlon team to deploy him elsewhere last year, and the experiment was a success. 

After placing fourth at the Giro despite struggling with illness, O’Connor produced an all-action display at the Vuelta, where he spent two weeks in the red jersey after his daring long-range effort on the road to Yunquera. He eventually had to settle for second overall behind Roglič, but the Australian could be justifiably pleased with his 2024 season, which was capped with a canny bronze medal at the World Championships in Zurich.

O’Connor has yet to hit those heights since switching to Jayco-Alula during the off-season, taking 10th at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, 15th at Paris-Nice and 12th at the Tour de Romandie. There isn’t reason for panic just yet. Backed by Tour debutant Eddie Dunbar, O’Connor will set out from Lille with high hopes.

Skjelmose made his Tour debut in 2023 fresh off overall victory at the Tour de Suisse, but the main event came a little too soon in his development. Despite being tipped as a podium dark horse before the start, he had to settle for a rather anonymous 29th overall. His most notable contribution came when he inadvertently started a rumour about Wout van Aert’s imminent abandon.

Two years on, Skjelmose returns to the Tour a more rounded rider. Last season, Lidl-Trek restricted his Grand Tour racing to the Vuelta a España and the choice proved a sage one, as he performed consistently across the three weeks to take fifth overall and the best young rider jersey.

By his own admission, Skjelmose hoped to ride the Giro rather than the Tour this year, but Lidl-Trek felt differently. No matter, his season has already been crowned by taking the scalps of both Pogačar and Evenepoel in a dramatic edition of Amstel Gold Race. He won’t live with them at the Tour, of course, but he should display marked progress on his 2023 showing.

The Frenchman insists he is more likely to chase stage wins than the general classification in this, his second Tour de France, but his performances in 2025 thus far suggest that he may already be prepared to take a step forward. There will certainly be plenty of hope heaped upon the 21-year-old in his home country. After 40 years of hurt, Martinez follows riders like Laurent Jalabert, Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet as the next man up, whether he likes it or not.

Martinez shone in March and April, taking fifth at the Volta a Catalunya and fourth at Flèche Wallonne before nabbing a fine stage win at Thyon 2000 on the Tour de Romandie. Although he lost the yellow jersey to Almeida the following day, he did enough to take second overall and further burnish his credentials as the coming man of French cycling.

Twelve months ago, mindful that he was about to defect to Bahrain, Groupama-FDJ hastily dropped a flagging Martinez into his Tour debut. He was largely anonymous en route to 124th overall, but the experience should stand him in good stead here. He will set out from Lille as co-leader with Santiago Buitrago. Whether he chases stage wins or the GC, Martinez will surely make a bigger impact the second time around.