Is the 2025 Tour de France a Straightforward Match?
Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard are set to clash in the Tour de France for a fifth time. The scores are currently two apiece.
UAE Team Emirates Celebrate Cictory at the 2024 Tour de France. Getty Images
Key Facts:
- Tadej Pogačar is 4/11 to win his fourth Tour de France.
- Global audience of 3.5 billion means bookies are keen to take bets on the famous race.
- 9/4 shot Jonas Vingegaard is out to avenge 2021 and 2024 defeats.
- Evenepoel, Thomas, Roglič and Wout van Aert amongst other stars on show.
Defending champion Tadej Pogačar is 4/11 to land the 2025 edition of the Tour de France, which will begin in Lille on Saturday, July 5. Success for the Slovenian would see the 26-year-old join Chris Froome as a four-time winner of the famous race.
With age on his side and an additional two second-placed finishes in his formbook, it would be no surprise if the 17-time Tour de France stage winner went on to take his record to five – joining Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain – and then officially become the most successful Tour de France racer in history.
The World’s Most-Watched Sporting Event
With 500,000-plus roadside spectators watching the peloton whiz by at an average speed of over 40 kilometres per hour daily, the Tour de France wins the award for the most attended sporting event in the world.
Apart from a World Cup every fourth year, the Tour de France’s global television audience of 3.5 billion makes it the most-watched sporting event in the world. Resultingly, online gambling sites eagerly produce odds about a host of outcomes on a stage-by-stage basis while also turning outright betting markets on the destiny of the four jerseys in play.
What Are the Tour de France Jerseys?
- Yellow Jersey (Maillot Jaune): Worn by the leader of the General Classification – the rider with the lowest cumulative time across all stages – it signifies the overall race leader and eventual winner.
- Green Jersey (Maillot Vert): Awarded and worn by the points classification leader. Points are earned through stage finishes and intermediate sprints. This accolade typically favours sprinters.
- Polka Dot Jersey (Maillot à Pois): Awarded to the leader of the mountains classification, the Polka Dot Jersey is based on points earned by being among the first to reach the summit of categorised climbs.
- White Jersey (Maillot Blanc): Awarded to the leader of the young rider classification (under 26) with the lowest cumulative time across all stages.
20/1 Bar Three in the Tour Betting
Pogačar’s 4/11 odds suggest the 2025 Tour de France is a done deal. His season has been sublime, with success in two Classic races (the Strade Bianche and La Flèche Wallonne), two Monument races (the Tour of Flanders and Liège–Bastogne–Liège) and the Major Stage Race, the Critérium du Dauphiné).
However, his old rival, 2022 and 2023 Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard will be out to avenge 2021 and 2024 defeats. On both occasions, the Danish star finished second to Pogačar. This year, sports betting sites have Vingegaard quoted on 9/4 odds.
It is noteworthy that a horrific crash at the 2024 Tour of the Basque Country (in early April) left Vingegaard hospitalised for 12 days. Suffice it to say, it was not the ideal preparation for last year’s Tour de France (which started on June 29), and he could strip fitter this time.
Only one other rider is quoted under 20/1 for this year’s race. That rider is double Olympic and World Champion Remco Evenepoel. The former youth football star from Belgium took the third podium step in last year’s Tour de France. It was his debut in cycling’s ultimate test.
2025 Tour de France in Numbers
- 1: Number of countries visited
- 2: Time trials
- 4: Mountain ranges
- 4: Previous winners expected to take part
- 5: Mountain summit finishes
- 6: Mountain stages
- 6: Hilly stages
- 7: Flat stages
- 8: Riders in each team
- 10.9: Kilometre shortest stage
- 21: Stages
- 23: Teams
- 59: Categorized climbs
- 184: Riders
- 209.1: Kilometre longest stage
- 2,304: Highest point of the race in metres
- 3,338.8: Total race distance in kilometres
- 51,550: Elevation gain in metres
- 500,000: Euros to the winner
- 2,300,000: Euros in total prizemoney
Tour de France History, TV and More
The Tour de France was created in 1903 by L’Auto magazine, a French newspaper that hoped the spectacle would increase sales and the circulation of its publication. The media world has changed a lot since, and newspapers now trail the internet, television, and streaming services.
It takes 300 staff, four helicopters, two aircraft, two motorcycles and 35 other vehicles to produce the Tour de France pictures that are beamed to broadcasters worldwide.
In the UK and Ireland, free-to-air live coverage of 2025’s race can be found on ITV4 and ITV’s streaming service, ITVX. TNT Sports and its streaming platform, Discovery+, are other places to catch the action. Welsh and Irish-speaking channels, S4C and TG4, also have rights to the action.
Stages to Look Out for in 2025
Two stages are guaranteed to produce fireworks. Stage 10 on Bastille Day (July 14) is a 165-kilometre slog through the Massif Central (French highlands) featuring eight categorised climbs, including a record seven Category 2 ascents.
With probable high temperatures, technical roads, and jagged climbs, this day could have a major say-so on the outcome of the prize, as could Stage 16’s 171-kilometre trek from Montpellier to the legendary Mont Ventoux on July 22nd.
Riders to Look Out for in 2025
While Pogačar, Vingegaard and Evenepoel will be GC stars of the show, the retiring Geraint Thomas (2018 Tour de France winner) should not be forgotten. He would surely love to win a stage of the race in his final year of competition.
The same can be said for the 2019 Tour de France victor, Egan Bernal. The Colombian cyclist was considered 95 per cent likely to die or be paralysed following a 2022 training crash, and understandably, it has taken a long time for him to find his old sparkle.
Now 35, time is running out on Primož Roglič’s career. He is doubtlessly the best rider in the peloton not to have previously won the contest, and he has had a long spell of desperate luck that could be broken.
In boxing terms, Wout van Aert is probably the best pound-for-pound cyclist on the planet – his Achilles heel is climbing mountains – and while he is duty-bound to serve Jonas Vingegaard, he can be expected to stake a claim on many of the hilly stages.
Wout van Aert is also a contender for glory in the eight sprint-friendly stages. However, with Jasper Philipsen, last year’s star sprinting performer, Biniam Girmay, Tim Merlier, Dylan Groenewegen and Jonathan Milan likely to be at the start of the 2025 Tour de France, he will have to be at the top of his game.
