Three weeks ago, on a sunny afternoon in the centre of Lille, Northern France, 23 teams stood on the start line of the Tour de France with big dreams. Many knew that faced with the flying, unstoppable duo of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, the yellow jersey was out of the question. Stage wins, on the other hand, were something to hope for. Sprint finishes, breakaway days and even mountain-top finishes if the general classification group allowed, all provided chances for opportunistic teams who wanted to make their mark on the biggest bike race in the world. Fast forward 19 stages, however, and 14 Tour squads are still empty-handed. Time has almost run out.
There is just one more stage left finishing on the famed Champs-Élysées this Sunday and for some, things have started to get desperate. The breakaway formation phase of stage 20 from Nantua to Pontarlier was proof of this: the likes of Bahrain-Victorious, Israel Premier-Tech and Movistar – all of whom have been relatively invisible in this Tour so far – fought with all they had to make the move in the penultimate opportunity of the race. Riders such as Fred Wright for Bahrain were unsuccessfully drawn back into the peloton, while others were luckier. Israel and Astana made it into the breakaway, but their dogged drive to capitalise off this was part of their eventual undoing.
It was on a wet, sweeping left-hand bend that Movistar’s Iván Romeo came face-to-face with the slippery tarmac, losing his wheels from underneath him as he turned. He took Groupama-FDJ’s Romain Grégoire with him in the mishap and both lost their chance to fight for victory when the race reached its finale. Both riders crossed the line with skin missing a few hours later, a real reminder of the cruelty of this bike race.
“They went so hot into that corner and we could see that the road was wet and it was an off-camber bend,” Stewart commented after the race. “I don’t know what they were thinking going so fast.”
Groves won Alpecin's third stage of this Tour (Image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)
Fundamentally, they were thinking about victory. About trying to salvage something from the Tour de France. The British rider had his own regrets from his day in the break on Saturday too. He opted not to chase stage winner Kaden Groves when the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider made his solo attack just before the final climb, trying to call the bluff of Picnic-PostNL’s Frank van den Broek. It was a mistake from a rider who ached to make the most of three weeks of brutal racing.
“I suppose you’ve got to be willing to lose it to try and win and it made sense in my mind [to let Groves go]. I tried to bluff a bit but obviously Van den Broek bluffed a bit harder. That’s part of racing – it doesn’t always pay off but when it does then it is pretty sweet. It didn’t today, and I’ll leave with a bitter taste in my mouth,” the disappointed 26-year-old said.
Paradoxically, one team who did not need another stage victory in this race was Alpecin-Deceuninck, but it was them who came out on top. Groves’ long-range solo hit out gave the Belgian team a third stage win, and the Australian rider was likely helped by the fact he was racing without any pressure on his shoulders. This win is just a bonus after an undeniably successful Tour for his team – they were the least desperate from the break, yet they came out on top. Cycling works in barbaric ways.
“I’m incredibly proud and happy for the team,” Groves grinned in his post-race press conference. “We had a dream start to the Tour, two stages and a number of days in yellow. I thought a stage win might not happen for me but to win solo, it’s incredible.”
It wasn’t just in the fight for the stage win that there was an air of desperation among the Tour peloton on stage 20. Jayco-Alula finished the stage frustrated after Ben O’Connor slipped out of the top-10 on the general classification – the Australian team tried to limit time the gap to Jordan Jegat from TotalEnergies who snuck into the break of the day, but ended up failing miserably.
“It was just a bit chaotic in the start, unfortunately we were isolated, and then it was difficult. Jegat had a good day, congrats to him,” Jayco sports director Steve Cummings commented after the race. “Ben was just isolated. I was surprised because there were a few other teams who missed out who you thought maybe they could have helped in one moment but that’s racing, isn’t it.”
As the former British pro states, the Tour de France is racing. It gives and it takes, it hurts and it heals. With just one more stage win remaining and the general classification pretty much set ahead of the final showdown in the City of Lights on Sunday, there will be dejected riders heading home from the 2025 Tour wishing that they could have been dealt a different hand. There will be others who will be drinking champagne and celebrating with gusto, leaving with multiple wins to their name while others have none.
It doesn’t seem fair, in some ways, but this is the nature of the beast.
