TOUR-Tops
Who have we particularly liked so far at the Tour de France 2025?
1st Thierry Gouvenou
Merci monsieur, one would like to shout to Thierry Gouvenou. The 56-year-old Frenchman is the route planner for the Tour de France. He is responsible for the fact that this year's Tour de France was as action-packed as possible and did not consist of boring flat stages in the first week as in the past. The Tour had an almost perfect design for the best entertainment. Keep it up!
2 Ben Healy
The Irish professional cyclist is only 24 years old - but he can already be considered one of the best entertainers in cycling. His pink work clothes, his curly hair, his earrings - Ben Healy, professional cyclist from the US team EF-Education, looks like a rock star - but puts on a much longer show than most top acts in the music scene. Healy is calm and reserved when he gets off his bike, like a British gentleman. Healy was born an Englishman and only later became an Irish citizen. In the race, he tirelessly looks for the chance to attack and thus escapes the control freaks in the teams of Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. First stage win as a soloist on the 6th day of the race, all out on the tenth day of the race - stage winner Simon Yates had to thank Healy for his tugging work at the front of the breakaway group. Healy rewarded himself with the yellow jersey - after chaser Tadej Pogacar had slowed down his pace to such an extent that he was able to relinquish the jersey that comes with many duties - perhaps also because he likes this hard-working Irishman.
3. Nils Politt
In Germany, Labour Day is only celebrated once, and with it the workers. At the Tour, the captains can celebrate their hard-working helpers every day - the knowledgeable spectators do so anyway. Nils Politt was a kind of pioneer of the labourers on racing bikes during the first ten days of the race. The long rascal from Hürth near Cologne knows how to transport valuable freight properly. He is a trained haulage contractor. And so he is the locomotive pulling the passenger train in the UAE Team Emirates jerseys with cruise control towards Paris. His most important passenger: team-mate Tadej Pogacar - because even he needs a slipstream during the three weeks. In short: Politt is working to ensure that a Tour victory for the Slovenian Pogacar would also be a good stage made in Germany.
4. the fans
The Tour de France is probably the longest trellis in the world. Only around 1,690 kilometres of the 3,338-kilometre route have been completed. But what was going on along the route this year - chapeau! Cycling and the French offer the world's biggest public festival! And this compliment comes from the editorial office in Munich, within sprint distance of the Oktoberfest. If you're not already at the track: go there! Preferably with a leather in your trousers.
5 Florian Lipowitz
At Team Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe, they would like to hide their greatest talent. Why remains a mystery - supposedly to protect the young man from expectations, which he has long since fuelled himself after his performances at the Tour of Spain 2024 (seventh) and this year at Paris-Nice (second), the Tour of the Basque Country (fourth) and the Tour of the Dauphiné (third), when he was significantly stronger than Remco Evenepoel on the climbs. He has thus recommended himself as a podium candidate at the Tour. He is also constantly putting his nose to the wind in order to stay as close as possible to the two top favourites or to give them a run for their money. He may be wasting a bit of energy on his Tour debut, but he can be forgiven for that. He makes German cycling fans want to watch live on TV or on the internet stream in the coming days in the Pyrenees and the Alps.
TOUR flops
Three weeks of hard work are always worthy of honour. Nevertheless, in top-class sport you have to be able to take criticism. Our list of who could do better.
1st Team Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe
For several years now, team boss Ralph Denk has been saying that he wants to win the Tour de France with his racing team - and preferably promote and mould a Tour winner himself, starting with the youngsters. As things stand, he is a long way from this goal. He brought racers with development potential such as Emanuel Buchmann, Lennard Kämna, Jai Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov into the team. But none of these projects were really sustainable - instead, he put the ageing Primoz Roglic in front of the ambitious employees. The 35-year-old Slovenian now looks a little decrepit - his former advantages, strong in individual time trials (Olympic champion in 2021) and explosive in uphill finishes (too many examples to name), seem to have been lost. Sport director Rolf Aldag consoles critical observers who ask whether the young German Florian Lipowitz is not the better option in the overall classification by saying that they should first wait for the long mountains - i.e. the stages in the Pyrenees and the Alps. We are curious! Little support for Lipowitz, a questionable team line-up, positioning errors in the race that are difficult to explain, hardly any visible teamwork - there is a lot of potential for improvement ...
2. the German sprinters
Admittedly: Germany has been spoilt in the recent past: André Greipel and Marcel Kittel delivered success stories almost daily with their stage wins in bunch sprints. But the land of sprinters is still looking for successors. Phil Bauhaus and Pascal Ackermann are doing their best to keep their noses in front at the finish line. But Jonathan Milan, Tim Merlier and Jasper Philipsen are currently visibly faster - they are missing a lot of watts, a lot of newtons on the pedals.
3. the Concussion Protocol
The world governing body, the UCI, has improved the regulations for fallen riders - more caution is required when sending fallen riders back into the race. However, there was little evidence of this during the first stages. The rules themselves are not to blame. They are interpreted by people. But the fact that the Tour's race doctors allowed the visibly dazed Georg Zimmermann to get back on his bike and finish the stage after a heavy, uncontrolled crash in the ditch was contrary to the spirit of the rules. Zimmermann was then taken out of the race for the next day after all - due to suspected concussion. It was not the only case in this Tour where (too) little learning effect was recognised in this matter. A racer with a concussion not only jeopardises his own life in the event of another crash, but also that of others.
4th Emanuel Buchmann
He thrilled German fans in 2019 when he rode in the Tour in the high mountains with the best around Egan Bernal and Geraint Thomas in the Team Bora jersey. Fourth place - the best performance by a German in the past two decades. After that, he never really got back on his feet. During this year's Tour, he vented about the treatment he received at his long-time employer, where he was booted out shortly before the planned start of the Giro the previous year. Presumably rightly so. Unfortunately, after fleeing to the French team Cofidis, there was no second spring to be seen. We hope that the climber from Upper Swabia will become more visible on the high mountain stages and get back on the road to success.
5 TotalEnergies
The French energy giant is actually sending two teams into the race - which is not permitted under UCI regulations. Both the French team TotalEnergies, which is at the start thanks to a wildcard from the organiser, and the INEOS Grenadiers will be riding through France with the TotalEnergies logo on their jerseys. On closer inspection, this is unfair competition and should not be allowed to pass. To put it kindly: The two teams have been so inconspicuous so far, as if they didn't want to fuel the discussion about the questionable interpretation of the rules in this case of dual sponsorship. The companies TotalEnergies and INEOS have been closely linked for a long time - INEOS recently took over 50 per cent of the shares in the French petrochemicals group.
Andreas Kublik
Editor
