"A yawn fest" - Armstrong, Wiggins, Hincapie and Martin on final Tour de France mountain stage

Lance Armstrong and his colleagues George Hincapie, Bradley Wiggins and Spencer Martin commented one more day on the podcast The Move what happened in the last high mountain stage of the Tour de France 2025. A stalemate was found between the main overall classification contenders whilst Primoz Roglic was the only one to try and risk it all for glory.

"It would have been fantastic for Jonas to win a stage with Arensman so close," Armstrong argued in The Move podcast. After a race spent battling and focusing on the yellow jersey, Team Visma | Lease a Bike have only won one stage, via Simon Yates on Le Mont Dore. This Friday Vingegaard came in second but was unable to reward Visma with the desired result.

Sir Bradley Wiggins, the hardest on Visma's tactics throughout the race, acknowledged that they had finally taken a different approach, but then ended up making a blunder that prevented them from winning with the Dane: "All through the Tour they've been telling us how they were going to ride, what they were going to do, how they were going to try to leave Tadej alone. I think this time they did the one thing they hadn't tried yet in the whole Tour. They stayed back and did nothing and let UAE race". However that was also not enough to succeed on their mission.

"UAE did a great job of tidying everything up, leaving it all very close on the last climb. He held off Tadej's first attack and all he had to do was sprint. If he had been willing to risk his second place overall in the final stages by betting on yellow, he did, and he didn't fall out of yellow. This time he could have risked a lot more to try to win the stage, which would have won back his Tour. We would have talked about him differently, he just had to sprint 50 meters earlier and he probably would have won the stage." It is difficult to argue that however, taking into consideration that it didn't look like the yellow jersey went all out.

George Hincapie argued that in the team car the right decisions weren't made, and that the team didn't manage to take advantage of a strong Vingegaard on the day. "I didn't have to risk anything. Lipowitz had already stayed. His second place was secure. He had no reason to start the sprint at 300 meters. As you say, if he had sprinted at 500 meters he would have won the stage".

"For me it was the director's fault. If you've been fighting in the Tour for 3 weeks, the rider is at 200 beats, he's not thinking clearly, the director knows what the race is like and they should have told him when to jump. I would have been second anyway, at least to have given you a chance to win."

Armstrong concluded: "It was a smooth day, I think that's the best way to sum it up. There was a moment when the four strongest riders of the race were together, the first four overall. "There we thought here we go, now the race starts to define itself, as we were talking about yesterday with that fight for third place. Oscar Onley couldn't hold Lipowitz's wheel, the heartbreaking story of the day. But after that, it was more of a yawn fest."