Rejoice! The Tours de France 2025 routes have been announced
Here it is, the day at the end of October, just in time for the end of the current cycling season, when the Tour de France will have you dreaming again about what lies ahead next year.
As always, the Tour organizers met in Paris and gradually introduced the routes of both the men’s and women’s races to invited guests, media and riders.
In a ceremony that lasted more than two hours and consisted mostly of montages, we finally got a look at all the delicious stage profiles and cards. You have to make the trip worthwhile for those present, even if Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel and Jonas Vingegaard, who stood at last year’s men’s podium, were not in the room and enjoyed a well-deserved rest, with the exception of Vingegaard, who is already training to try to defeat his Slovenian nemesis next July.
The headlines for the men: A double ascent of the Mûr-de-Bretagne in the first week, a Tuesday rest day (!), three difficult Peyrenean days with summit attacks in Hautacam and Luchon-Superbagneres, in between a mountain time trial on the Peyragudes, a summit finish on Mont Ventoux and then a queen stage at the Col de la Loze before the GC race ends with a summit finish at La Plagne.
The headlines for the women: An organized south-eastern excursion from Brittany to the Alps, with two crunchy stages opening the action before two days of sprinting take us into the hills of the Massif Central. The finale is three days of fireworks in the Alps: Col du Granier, Col de Madeleine and Col de Joux Plane are included. Enjoy.
Now for the deeper dive.
Route of the Tour de France Hommes 2025
“300 applications per year,” said Tour boss Christian Prudhomme about the number of cities that applied to host stage starts and finishes before the route was unveiled. Logistically sensible for the overall route and hopefully optimal conditions for an entertaining race.
Both the men’s and women’s races are taking place entirely in France this year, following several Grand Départs abroad and a special boost to the exuberance of last year’s opening in Florence, with a start in Lille arranged for 2025.
“We have French fries, we drink beer and we know how to party,” promised us an official from the Northern Department, almost aware that Copenhagen, Bilbao and Florence are difficult to follow. There is also a fantastic duck restaurant in Lille, but I’m keeping it to myself for now until we sort out our reservation.
The first stage in Lille looks set to see a sprinter wear the yellow jersey for the first time in half a decade, before we trade the finish of the second stage in Bologna in 2024 for Boulogne-sur-Mer, a crisp climb finish with three climbs in the final 10km along the coast when ASO turned to ChatGPT for the ingredients for an animated bike race finale.
Stage 3 to Dunkirk could also be windy (no point checking the weather forecasts yet, we still have nine months to go) but should suit the sprinters. Stage 4 begins our transfer over to Brittany with a punchy finish in Rouen, and then comes Stage 5 a flat time trial in Caen. This is the day to get all your work done so you can relax for the rest of the week.
Get ready for over-the-top English history references on Stage 6 as we begin in the tapestry city of Bayeux, with 3,500 meters of elevation gain and an uphill finish that sets the stage for a similar menu on Friday when the peloton crosses the Mûr-de-Bretagne in Attack takes place twice, the second climb was the finish line. With Mathieu van der Poel hinting he could miss next summer’s Tour, the venue where he won in 2021 could be enough to lure him there again.
The first weekend, and the route requires long transfer days from the northwest to the belly button of France, a few flat stages in no way intended for the large weekend television audience, but (at this point you shrug your shoulders in a very French way). ) What can you do? Expect the media to promise crosswinds that don’t materialize and tweets pondering why 400km flat bike racing isn’t the most exciting sporting competition they’ve ever seen.
An interesting addition to this edition is that Bastille Day falls on a Monday, where we continue the race, with 4,400 meters of climbing on the way to the Massif Central and a finish at Puy de Sancy, where Pogačar could probably take a break got restless after a week and a half of wandering around the flatter side of France.
Then a rest day on Tuesday in Toulouse, how novel! We stay in the city for a day of sprinting on stage 11 and then head to the Pyrenees for an elaborate Tour GC slog-a-thon.
Stage 12: Summit arrival to Hautacam via the Col du Soulor and the Col des Borderes. 3,850 meters of altitude and the scene in which Vingegaard secured his second yellow jersey in 2023.
Stage 13: Mountain time trial to Peyragudes. Get ready for James Bond references with the Altiport from Tomorrow Never Dies. Social media managers will stumble upon their skillful thumbs to acquire these sweet, sweet doozies to show to their boss who can’t stop clicking on ads he shouldn’t be clicking. It’s an 11km TT, almost entirely uphill, about as exciting as a time trial can get. Well done, course designer Thierry Gouvenou.
That’s two tough days in a row, so how about a third? 4,950 meters of elevation gain over Tourmalet, Aspin, Peyresourde and a summit finish at Luchon-Superbagneres, which has been on the route for 36 years.
We end Sunday with a day of sprinting to Carcassonne and a steaming hot cassoulet for dinner, even though it’s 37°C outside. It’s just the way things are done. A second rest day in Montpelier on the usual Monday, meaning a reduced but busy second week before we head to the Alps for the second half of the GC battle. But first…
We start the final week with a stage 16 summit finish on Mont Ventoux, for the first time in 11 years. Not bad, ASO, not bad at all. You know how to keep us coming back again and again.
Stage 17 is then a transition day in the sprint to Valence to get us within striking distance of the Alps, before we take a trip over the Col du Glandon and the Col de la Madeleine and up to the Col de la Loze on Thursday. This is your queen stage. Drink it in.
The 19th stage then gives us the second day in a row where we finish over 2,000 meters as the race takes in the Col de Saisies, the Col de Pré and the Cormet de Roseland before another peak at the La Plagne ski resort reach, which should be the last GC action if the race is not over yet.
Stage 20 serves as a warm-up for the sprinters as we head back north (Christophe Laporte is likely to win from a breakaway), and then Paris is on the Champs-Élysées after a year off for the World Sprinter Championships back. Tres leg.
Tour de France Femmes with Zwift 2025 route
Dubbed “The Diagonal of Queens” by the ASO, as the peloton moves southeast from Brittany down to the Alps. The French translation is the title of a novel in which two female protagonists have opposing visions of the world (according to the Amazon blurb), with one believing in the strength of the group and the other in individualism. What better way to line up 2023 winner Demi Vollering as she returns for a French team to try and spoil her old home SD Worx-Protime and a returning Anna van der Breggen?
Nine stages, 17,240 meters of elevation gain over a total of 1,165 kilometers and a fairly even mix of flat, bumpy, medium and high mountain stages.
Stage 1, which begins on the day the men arrive in Paris, is intended for puncheurs with a finish lap at the Côte de Cadoudal in Plumelec, and the second stage’s Brest to Quimper route is suitable for a similar style of rider. The sprinters will have to wait until the finish line of the third stage in Angers for their shot as the race concludes the Brittany Grand Départ.
Here too, the stage types arrive in pairs, as stage 4 (like almost the entire race) leads southeast from Saumur to Poitiers.
The slow climb now accelerates with a hillier offering on stage five, which should peak when the final climb is reached 7 kilometers from the finish line.
Stage 6 returns to our old friend Clermont-Ferrand, especially because that’s where you’d otherwise want to be when you’re in the middle of the country as the peloton tackles 2,350 meters of elevation in the Massif Central, as we should finally see GC riders step into the Foreground if they have kept themselves well hidden in this race so far.
On stage seven we leave the chicken town of Bourg-en-Bresse and enter the Alps with a tough climb over the Col du Granier before descending to Chambery, setting us up for our first summit finish of the race the next day at Saint François Longchamp at the Col de Madeleine at 2,000 meters after a total of 3,490 meters in altitude on the stage. Damned.
In the final act of stage 9, the GC battle takes you over the Col de Joux Plane before the Col de Corbier and then a steady, gradual climb to Châtel.
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