Tour de France 2025 - 14th stage: Voigt's preview: Who is weakening on the Tourmalet?

Stage 14 | Saturday, 19 July 2025 | Pau - Luchon-Superbagnères | 182.6 kilometres | 4950 vertical metres

Jens Voigt's assessment of the 14th stage

Another very tough high mountain stage in the Pyrenees: the four mountain classifications alone add up to 43.6 kilometres. We are experiencing the third mountain finish in a row - if you include the mountain time trial. By now at the latest, the riders will be showing their first signs of weakness, even the favourites. The course of the stage is identical to the stage in 1986, when Greg Lemond took almost five minutes off the previous year's winner and team-mate Bernard Hinault on stage 13 and laid the foundations for overall victory - the US American was the first non-European to win the Tour.

The first climb of the day is the legendary Tourmalet, which is 19 kilometres long. This year, the longer side of the road is used. I personally liked this direction more because you use the worse and narrower road uphill and the wide and smooth road downhill. It's simply safer that way. And I myself had one of the best days of my career on the Tourmalet, when we laid the foundations for Carlos Sastre's subsequent overall victory in 2008 with a daring plan.

The Tourmalet (Hors Catégorie) is followed by the Col d'Aspin (2nd category), Col de Peyresourde (1st) and Superbagnères (1st). A strong breakaway group could break away in the first 80 kilometres and stay in front until the finish. For the sprinters: don't lose too much time on the Tourmalet! Overall, I see the Pyrenees stages as uncritical in terms of time limits.

Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of the 14th stage of the Tour de France 2025

• Neutral start: 12:00 pm, sharp start 12:15 pm
• Estimated arrival time: between 17:07 and 17:44
• TV broadcast: ARD 14:00-18:00, Eurosport 1 11:45-17:30
• Live stream: sportschau.de, Discovery Plus (fee required)
• All stages of the Tour de France 2025 at a glance

Highlights of the 14th stage

• 13:45: Intermediate sprint in Romorantin-Lanthenay. Immediately after the sprint finish at kilometre 70, the race heads up the climb to the Col du Tourmalet (2115 metres)
• 16:30: Start of the final climb to Superbagnères, which was last part of the Tour route in 1989. Winner back then: Robert Millar. The data: 12.4 kilometres at 7.3 per cent.

TOUR expert Jens Voigt

Nobody in the German-speaking world knows the Tour de France better: Jens Voigt competed in the most important cycling race as a professional a total of 17 times between 1998 and 2014. Only the Frenchman Sylvain Chavanel, the current record holder, has managed one more participation. Voigt knows the race from the perspective of the winner and the tireless helper in the team. He won two stages himself and wore the yellow jersey for one day each in 2001 and 2005. In 2010, as a team-mate in Team Saxo Bank, he accompanied Luxembourg's Andy Schleck to his overall victory (after the doping disqualification of Alberto Contador, who initially came first; editor's note). The 53-year-old Berliner currently works as a brand ambassador for the bike manufacturer Trek and as a pundit for the Eurosport channel.

For TOUR readers, the former pro gives his predictions for the course of the 21 stages, points out difficulties and things worth seeing. For each day's stage, he gives a tip on what role the course could play in the final standings in the individual classifications in Paris. If three of the jerseys are coloured, this means that this day could be decisive for this classification - i.e. overall classification (yellow), sprint/points classification (green) and classification of the best climber (red dotted jersey). We also give you the broadcast times of the TV channels in Germany (ARD and Eurosport) and their live streams - plus tips on when it might be particularly worth tuning in.