Tour De France 2025
No crescendo to a climax finish this year. Instead, Tour de France 2025 provided non-stop fireworks all three weeks long. Every day I tuned in live for the final 30-40 miles and watched at night Belgian’s Vive le Velo TV show for the daily summary and race analysis.
Here are my highlights:
- Obviously 2025 is the (re-)crowning of King Tadej who dominates every type of race. Jonas and his yellow Bumblebees tried. In the words of Fitte Peeters: “He was just too strong”. Tadej came with a strong team, including superman Tim Wellens.
- Team Alpecin-Deceuninck defines joy and team spirit, even though they lost their lead Jasper Philipsen in a crash. This team works hard for each other and had success doing it.
- The joy of the Time Trial victory and the tragedy of Remco dropping out. I was rooting for Remco to take spot 2. (Let’s be honest, spot 1 was never in question.)
- The never ending attacks of Quinn Simmons. Pure rock ’n roll!
- The vlogs of Victor Campenaerts and Matteo Jorgenson. Matteo served us knowledge tidbits daily on the vlog of Victor in the bus of Visma-Lease-a-bike. Victor was very strong this tour!
- The battles on the Mt. Ventoux, both for stage win and for the GC, was pure magic. The best day to watch … until …
- Wout’s attack on Mont Marte in Paris. All of Belgium and beyond shouted it out when Wout dropped Tadej on the cobblestones. It was magic: Paris, troves of spectators along the route, and a battle mano-a-mano. Wout, pure sang!