Visma run out of steam as Picnic storm the Loze: top takeaways from stage 18

The brutal queen stage of the 2025 Tour de France packed in three arduous Alpine ascents along its 171.9km, and though poor weather conditions loomed on the horizon, the day began in glorious sunshine once again, as audiences were treated to awe-inspiring views of the peaks and valleys of south-western France.

An early breakaway contained some serious hitters, including Primož Roglič, but the spotlight was on the GC group to see who would blink first in the three-week long chess game between UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma | Lease a Bike. 

What transpired was a day of surprises - from the stage winner, to the way the central of the three climbs turned out to be the one where all of the key action unfolded. Though the final climb may have lacked in drama by comparison to the earlier parts of the day, the battle for the white jersey kept the 

The first notable incident of the day was an apparent truce among the bunch, with the ultimate goal of seeing a sprinter win the green jersey. This is, at least, what was relayed to the Lidl-Trek team, via their team radios, just after flag drop, and though it’s not clear which teams were a part of the truce, it certainly appeared that such a situation existed, as instead of launching early attacks to try and get up the road, the entire bunch sat behind Lidl-Trek, allowing them to effectively neutralize the race for 23 kilometres, until the intermediate sprint had been and gone. 

With an additional 20 points in the bag, Jonathan Milan has effectively sealed his victory in the points classification. Any further discussion of the competition being rigged against sprinters, or of Pogacar trying to win everything, is now moot – assuming Milan makes it to Paris. Following the sprint he was the first man to drop, and he stayed safe in the grupetto and finished safely inside the timecut.

Perhaps the most significant point of note is the will of the group, to try and collectively engineer an outcome they deemed preferable. The ASO may wish to take into account the dissenting voices of the sprinters and their teams, when they look ahead to next year’s race and beyond.

Ben O’Connor has suffered a remarkable rollercoaster at the hands of this race. Following his first stage win back in 2021, O’Connor was widely regarded as an outsider for a podium finish in 2022, following his third place at the Critérium du Dauphiné, but since then, he’s suffered setback after setback, with crashes hampering his progress and inconsistent form preventing him from piecing together a serious campaign for the general classification.

Things didn’t get better this year, when he crashed in the closing stages of stage 1 in Lille, despite having worked hard to make the successful group of favourites who were ahead of the split in the bunch, following the crosswinds that saw the likes of Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič lose half a minute.

Since then, O’Connor has been rebuilding day by day, and he has been visible in a number of stages trying his luck in the breakaway. The high Alps is most definitely O’Connor country – despite fact the cool, misty conditions at the summit weren’t quite as grim as on the day of his last famous victory, in 2021 in Tignes. Today was a real comeback – proof of just how strong O’Connor can be; let’s not forget he finished second only to Pogačar at the World Championships last year. 

While he may struggle with putting together three consecutive good weeks – despite almost proving otherwise at last year’s Vuelta a Espana – he has proven on several occasions that he is a master of timing when it comes to long climbs and high mountains. His solo victory was the first win for his team, his nation, and the southern hemisphere at this year’s race, and it was a triumph that brought joy to a great many fans, Down Under and throughout the cycling community.

You have to hand it to Visma | Lease a Bike. Despite being up against a seemingly insurmountable deficit on GC, against a truly formidable opponent, they said they would fight, and fight they did.

Vingegaard had told reporters on rest day that he would be prepared to lose second place, in order to try and win, and it seemed at first as though this is what he was doing on today’s stage. With Matteo Jorgenson launched up the road in the team’s tried-and-tested satellite rider role, Visma set a strong pace on the Col de la Madeleine and shredded the GC group down to just a few riders, before Sepp Kuss took off, sending Vingegaard up the road to shoot his shot.

Though he hooked up with Jorgenson, who rode a blistering pace on the descent, keeping a cool head under pressure, as they rode in the valley ahead of the final test, a stalemate broke out. Jorgenson re-launched his satellite effort along with the eventual victor, O’Connor, and Einer Rubio, while Pogačar, Vingegaard, and Roglič looked at each other, refused to cooperate, and chased down the likes of Felix Gall when he tried to attack as they clearly couldn’t face being alone together anymore. 

The stand-off allowed a sizeable chase group to catch up, which included key teammates for both of the protagonists, and when this group bridged to Jorgenson he was deemed surplus to requirements; perhaps told to save himself for tomorrow. Unfortunately, having worked hard all day, the Visma train ran out of steam. From there, it was advantage UAE, and though Vingegaard stubbornly held the party line in his post-race interview, repeating the increasingly delusional mantra ‘The Tour is not over,’ following today’s performance, it seems almost certain that the opposite is true.

His rivals have tried everything to shake him. On and off the road, Visma | Lease a Bike have waged out-and-out war on Pogačar to try and unsettle him psychologically, as they seek to simultaneously break him down physically. 

At this stage in the race, Pogačar doesn’t have to do anything. With over four minutes over his closest rival and three stage wins already in his back pocket, Pogačar can stick with his domestiques and stay out of trouble, and the only time he has to respond is if Vingegaard attacks. Pogačar could have done what many of us would have expected of him today, and launched a counter-move to try and drop his rival – and it probably would have worked, given the evidence we have available. But, just as we saw on Ventoux on Tuesday, he is making wiser choices. Conserving his energy, rather than striking out with 50+ kilometres remaining. There is no need for him to take any unnecessary risks, especially if he is nursing the remnants of a cold or not feeling 100%. Whether he’s finally beginning to feel some fatigue and this is taking the edge off of his explosivity, or even dulling his seemingly inexhaustible desire to race hard, it wasn’t enough to stop him being able to follow Jonas when it mattered. Even better, he could enjoy the arrival of reinforcements on the Loze, before calmly following the moves to the finish – no showboating – outside of a few hundred metres of ‘making his point’ in the dying moments of the stage – quietly going about vanquishing the mountain that was his undoing in 2023.

By far the stand-out moment of the day – possibly of the race so far – for me, was the startling moment that the Team Picnic-PostNL train, riding full gas at the head of a chasing peloton, caught and passed the yellow jersey, along with Vingegaard, Pogačar and co, for a moment making the best riders in the world look utterly pedestrian.

It was a moment which stood as a symbol of the team’s performance at this race, and of the blossoming of Oscar Onley into his Tour de France debut. Dropped on the Madeleine, as the time gap grew and grew between Onley and the rider who he would have hoped to challenge for the white jersey, Lipowitz, for a long while it was simply a case of assuming he had finally cracked under the strain of his laudable efforts, and would be content to settle for a top five placement.

Not so. Where Red Bull failed, Picnic delivered, the team rallying behind Onley (well, in front of him) and ensuring he was in the best possible position from which to take on the final climb. The pacing strategy was executed to perfection, and Onley was able to match the best riders on the planet, only losing touch following Pogacar’s final acceleration, just a few hundred metres from the summit. 

Following today’s performance, Onley must be considered among the best riders in the world – his stellar ride on the Queen stage backs up almost three weeks of going toe-to-toe with the race’s key players, and proving himself a worthy contender. Against the odds, just 22 seconds now stand between the young man from the Scottish borders, and a podium place at just his second Tour de France.

What Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe were trying to pull off today might have been a brilliant plan, but it lacked something that Picnic-PostNL displayed in spades – unity. Having co-leaders is always a risky strategy, and it’s been a blessing and a curse for the German team at this Tour, with both Roglič and Lipowitz displaying good form, though it became clear after the first proper climbing test on the Hautacam, that the German was the stronger bet for the podium.

Perhaps the plan was to try and launch Roglič up the road to either stay away with the break, or latch onto the yellow jersey group and try to claw some time back on GC – either way, it left Lipowitz isolated and forced to ride the Madeleine alone. He did so brilliantly, bridging back to the GC group, then, somewhat bafflingly, headed up the road - alone once again - in a bid to secure his white jersey, with Onley slipping away at that point.

In the end, the yo-yo riding of both leaders left them falling away from the main group. Roglič finished a minute behind Pogačar and Lipowitz nearly two minutes. The pair of them, labouring in isolation rather than supporting one another, did nothing other than jeopardise the white jersey and podium place of Lipowitz – just 22 seconds now stands between the German and the Scot, heading into the final crucial mountain stage.

The fault here surely lies within the team car – taking a gamble on a seasoned rider like Roglič is one thing, but gambling on the capability of a 24-year-old riding just his third Grand Tour to labour alone almost all day on the toughest stage of the race is borderline negligent. Also questionable is the strategy of bringing two leaders, and hedging bets on who to support, with just one climbing domestique in Aleksandr Vlasov, who has been absent in most of the key moments of the race. 

With potentially three among the top 6 or 7 GC riders in the world on their books next season should the Evenepoel deal go through, the team are going to have to work hard on strategy if they hope to keep their biggest assets happy, or indeed to make any in-roads into beating the super-teams – of which they can now claim to be one.