Ben Healy the GC rider - "I want to be up with the big boys" at the 2025 Tour de France and finish in the Top10

Ben Healy has had quite the Tour de France thus far, winning stage 6 with a masterful breakaway performance, and then jumping to the yellow jersey with another brave move on the 10th day. On the first day of the Pyrenees, he struggled brutally with the heat and lost a lot of time, but has regathered himself and is climbing with the best once again.

On stage 14 he tried to go for it once again and join the breakaway, but actually couldn't hold it's pace on the Col du Tourmalet: “I went for the break today and spent a lot of energy doing that, but I realized pretty quickly on that I didn't have the legs for the stage, especially with UAE pulling behind. So I decided to pull the plug and see what I could do in the finale," he explained in a post-race interview.

"I think it was the right decision in the end. Thymen [Arensman] and then Lenny [Martínez] were pulling so hard on the Tourmalet. I had to make the decision on the road. They went so hard on that climb, and in the valleys. It really hurt the legs.”  

The EF Education-EasyPost rider put in a ride that was much better than two days prior where he was dropped on the Col du Soulor and then lost over 13 minutes to Tadej Pogacar and stepped out of the Top10. But despite this, he actually remained focused in contesting for the overall classification and jumped back into 9th place at Superbagnères - overtaking Remco Evenepoel and Matteo Jorgenson, for different reasons. 

"Now that I am top ten on GC, I am not just going to lose time on purpose. Days like this and the ones coming up are the kind of days that always suit me," he admits, having finished seventh on the day, arriving at the finish with Primoz Roglic. "I think I've always sort of known that, but I've approached them from a breakaway standpoint rather than for the GC. I want to be up with the big boys".

DS Charles Wegelius was also keen to praise the Irishman for an unusual yet strong performance: "Ben did a great job making it in. But, the constant pace changes and accelerations were a bit too much for him to handle. And he did something that's quite rare, which is getting dropped out of the breakaway, but still finding the resources to recover before getting caught, so he could stay with the yellow jersey group."