In just over two weeks, the 2025
Tour de France will depart
from Lille with a narrative that writes itself: can
Jonas Vingegaard wrestle
back the yellow jersey from
Tadej Pogacar? After being dethroned in 2024, the
Dane returns as the figurehead of a stacked
Team Visma | Lease a Bike squad.
But within the strength of their lineup lies a clear vulnerability, one that
Tom Dumoulin believes could cost them.
Due to the loss of Christophe Laporte, Visma are set to
start the Tour with three riders,
Simon Yates,
Wout van Aert, and Edoardo
Affini, who all completed the Giro d’Italia in full just a few weeks ago. It’s
a bold strategy, especially given the historical difficulty of combining the
Giro and the Tour in such close succession.
“There was just an extra week between the end of the Giro
and the start of the Tour back then,”
said Dumoulin to Wielerflits,
referencing his own double podium in 2018. “That really made a huge
difference.”
The timing gap this year is five weeks. At first glance,
that might seem like enough to recover, rebuild, and sharpen the legs for July.
But Dumoulin explains that this window falls into a physiological and mental
grey zone.
“You want to start preparing for the Tour, but you are also
fucked up from the Giro. That recovery really takes a week or two. But then you
only have a good two and a half weeks left before the start of the Tour, while
you really want to take it easy again that last week before. So you only have a
good week to a week and a half to train seriously. That is far too short. That
is why that extra week in 2018 was the salvation for Froome and me to combine
it well.”
The mental strain is just as important as the physical,
especially in such a long race. “It's not easy mentally to be completely sharp
for two times three weeks in a row. Especially to be able to muster up the
courage to ride yourself completely to pieces for two times three weeks in a
short period,” Dumoulin adds. “GC riders are usually resilient people. The
Tour-Vuelta combination often goes well for them. The only difference is that
there is a week less in between than after the Giro.”
This puts Visma’s decision in sharp focus. Affini and Van
Aert were key workhorses at the Giro. Simon Yates went one better and won the
whole thing. But does that mean he’s in top shape, or spent?
Dumoulin doesn’t expect disaster, if Yates and Van Aert are
used wisely. “He also rides in a serving role and will let go in the sprint
stages,” Dumoulin said of Yates. “In all the stages in which he does not have
to help Vingegaard for as long as possible, he will experience much less stress
and pressure and he will not have to go as deep physically.
“It is precisely those last few percent of going completely
to hell that cause so much fatigue. If the peloton rides very hard all day and
lets you go at the end, that is a completely different strain on your body than
when it is a gruelling stage and you are in contention for the win.”
The same principle applies to Van Aert, who came close to
his best form at the Giro. “That also applies to Van Aert. He has two roles in
which he chooses days on which he turns himself inside out, such as in that
stage over the Colle delle Finestre in the Giro. But he also had days in that
final week when he let it go. He will do that again in the Tour.”
It’s a tactical tightrope. Visma’s provisional Tour squad, Vingegaard,
Yates, Van Aert, Affini, Benoot, Campenaerts, Sepp Kuss, and Matteo Jorgenson, boasts
enormous depth. But how fresh are they, really?
Simon Yates poetically won the 2025 Giro d'Italia
Compare that to UAE Team Emirates - XRG, who arrive with
arguably the strongest Tour team in the post-Sky era. Pogacar is supported by
Joao Almeida, Adam Yates, Marc Soler, Pavel Sivakov, Tim Wellens, Nils Politt,
Jhonatan Narváez, and Domen Novak. The group is incredibly deep and Almeida in
particular looks in searing form after a powerful ride at the Tour de Suisse.
In 2023, Pogacar suffered from isolation in the high
mountains. In 2024, the script flipped, Vingegaard was the one without support.
In 2025, both bring reinforcements.
It also sets up a fascinating personal duel: Simon Yates
riding in service of Vingegaard, while his twin brother Adam is one of
Pogacar’s mountain lieutenants. If either Yates finds themselves off-duty or in
a breakaway, we could be in for the same civil war we saw on stage 1 of the
2023 Tour.
Then there’s the third giant: Remco Evenepoel. The Soudal –
Quick-Step leader enters the Tour with the weakest of the three teams.
Crucially, Mikel Landa, his most experienced mountain domestique, is out after
crashing badly on Stage 1 of the Giro. Evenepoel will rely on riders with far
less climbing pedigree to get through the Alps and Pyrenees, and in the recent
he was far too often left isolated. On talent, he can hang with Pogacar and
Vingegaard at times. On support, he is on his own.
That said, there’s no guarantee UAE’s depth will be the
deciding factor. It still comes down to how Vingegaard recovers, and whether
his teammates’ Giro legs hold up. As Dumoulin cautions, “It sounds crazy, but
sometimes that’s better. You only have to maintain your condition from the Tour
a little bit. I myself have always ridden terribly well two weeks after the
Tour.
“When I went to the Benelux Tour, I really took my Tour legs
with me and I was super good. But four to five weeks after the Tour is just a
shitty period. And that is exactly the bridge between the Giro and the Tour.
Five weeks is just too long to continue good form – which you can maintain for
two months – but just too short to really reset after the Giro. That makes it
so difficult.”
It would have been also interesting to find out Dumoulin's opinion in this regard about Pog doing Giro and the Tour last year, especially considering that, powerwise, Pog's best results came during the last third of the Tour.
The understanding and management of recovery and performance physiology has advanced - even since Dumoulin.