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The relative calm of the highway low season was interrupted Tuesday with the pageantry and projections for the largest weeks to come back on the 2025 racing calendar – the 112th version of the Tour de France and the fourth version for the Tour de France Femmes.
The official route presentation for each the lads’s and girls’s Grand Excursions has change into one of many greatest days of the non-racing season, as notable riders from the lads’s and girls’s skilled peloton gathered on the Palais des Congres in central Paris to soak up the video displays, host group feedback and organiser evaluation for brand new terrain and returning challenges.
Robust applause greeted the introduction of many French riders in attendance, with the loudest refrain sounding for retiring rider and a nine-time nationwide champion Audrey Cordon-Ragot (Human Powered Well being).
Evita Muzic (FDJ-SUEZ), who was fourth on GC finally yr’s Tour de France Femmes, sat close by. Belgian Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance coverage-Soudal) was in attendance, as she received the polka-dot jersey and one stage on the Tour de France Femmes this previous August.
There have been additionally Romain Grégoire and Olympic silver medallist Valentin Madouas (each Groupama-FDJ), Lenny Martinez, who will transfer from Groupama to Bahrain-Victorious subsequent season. The house crowd was additionally handled to 2 French riders who received phases on the Tour final yr, Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies) and Kevin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Inns).
4 completed sprinters had been in attendance, led by all-time Tour stage winner Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan), who is about to retire on the finish of this yr. He eclipsed the file held by Eddy Merckx and captured his historic thirty fifth stage victory in Saint Vulbas in July.
“It has been nice. Issues have not modified that a lot, I have been using my bike, spending time with my children, I simply have not been shouting in races anymore. I have been travelling, been busy, been on vacation – it was the primary time I might actually take pleasure in a vacation,” Cavendish mentioned when he took the stage.
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“Like each rider who’s ridden the Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, you end it and suppose ‘I am by no means doing that once more’ and a few days later you miss it and lengthy for the thrill.”
Rising expertise Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) attended his first route presentation ceremony. He received the inexperienced jersey at this yr’s Tour because of a haul of three stage wins amongst his eight high 10s. Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), a nine-time stage winner and former factors champion on the Tour, and Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco AlUla), who received his sixth stage on the Tour final yr, had been there as nicely.
The French group, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, was represented by Sam Bennett, a two-time stage winner and factors classification winner from 2020. From Uno-X Mobility had been Magnus Cort, one other two-time Tour stage winner, and four-time stage winner Alexander Kristoff.
Lacking from the occasion had been latest previous champions of the Grand Excursions – Tadej Pogačar (UAE Workforce Emirates) on the lads’s aspect and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) on the ladies’s aspect. It’s the low season in any case.
Routes
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As soon as race administrators Christian Prudhomme and Marion Rousse took centre stage, it was time to amp up the proceedings. For the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift route, Rousse confirmed the race will happen over 9 phases – up from eight and over the UCI restrict – with the beginning in Brittany.
She then revealed the brand new data, that there could be no time trialling and the race would transfer from medium mountains within the Massif Central to the ultimate three phases within the Alps. The finale would go over the well-known Col de Joux Aircraft, then the Col de Corbier and end in Chatel.
The primary summit end could be on the penultimate stage and was probably the most important day of racing, with main elevation acquire and the summit end on the Col de la Madeleine.
“What you see is that the Tour as a complete is tougher than earlier years – we have made a step up. So we have designed the route with the thought of eager to placed on one thing tougher. From the Thursday to the Sunday it is both medium- or high-mountain phases,” Rousse mentioned.
From the cross-country route reveal for the ladies, Prudhomme introduced, “It is time”, after which went immediately into the lads’s route, which was already identified to have the Grand Depart in north-east France in Lille.
There could be 10 uninterrupted phases within the opening week, as stage 10 would happen on the nationwide vacation, Bastille Day, taking the peloton into the Massif Central. There could be three climbing days within the second week, together with Hautacam on stage 12, a mountain time trial on stage 13 and a trio of monster climbs on stage 14 – Tourmalet, Apsin, and Peyresourde.
The third and ultimate week begins with the end atop Mont Ventoux, which was final a stage end in 2013, and likewise options Alpine climbs on stage 19 with that end on La Plagne. Then it is again to Paris for the Champs Élysées finale, returning after the departure final yr for the Olympic Video games.
The primary half of this yr’s Tour has a good quantity of punchy terrain however the second half of the race is all concerning the mountains, with two time trials totalling 44km positioned within the center.
“We have now a flat opening week however it’s deceiving to the attention. For 15 years we have seemed to place difficulties among the many flat, however right here we achieve this in a scientific method, with 4 finishes made for the puncheurs within the opening week. Then the second a part of the Tour de France we launch into the mountains,” Prudhomme advised the gang.
“Final yr, for me, the most effective stage was the one within the Massif Central. The division of the Puy de Dome is at all times spectacular. For us, the Pyrenees and the Alps are indispensable, however what we have wished to do and to indicate is that the race can play out elsewhere.”
