2025 Tour de France Preview

Welcome to Plates and Pedals, now on my own website! Apologies for any growing pains as I transition to a new website. If something isn’t working right, let me know! For those that followed along with me for the Giro d’Italia, welcome back! In this post we will preview the Tour de France and our first dish of this year’s tour. If you want to read about this year’s Giro, and the original inspiration for this blog, see my full archive of Giro d’Italia posts here, or read my Giro recap.

What to Expect from this Blog

Like my Giro blog, I will still post about my attempts to cook a regionally appropriate dish and stage summaries. Occasionally I will add context about cycling as a sport, or relevant history and context for the stage or dish. However, unlike my Giro blog, I will be posting a few times a week, rather than nightly. While daily cooking and posting was a fun and unique challenge, it did take a lot of time, so I’m hoping this will be a better balance.

Route Overview

This year’s Tour de France is a 100 percent French edition. Often, the Tour de France will kick off in a neighboring country (the past 3 “grand departs” have been in: Italy, Spain, and Denmark). This year it starts in Northeastern France, bordering Belgium.

These stats were pulled from the official Tour de France Website.

This year’s tour is 3,339 km (2,075 miles) long. (Thats a few hundred miles more than if you were to bike from the border of Canada and North Dakota down to the southernmost point of Texas bordering Mexico.)

The Tour will go through 11 regions and 34 departments.

Of the 21 stages there are:

7 Flat stages
6 Hilly stages
6 Mountain Stages (of which 5 are mountain-top finishes.)
2 Individual Time Trials

And, in terms of elevation, the riders will climb a total of 52,500 m (57,415 yards, or roughly biking up Mount Everest 6 times.)

2025 Tour de France Route (Source)

Tour de France 101

For this year’s Tour there are two main GC contenders: Tadej Pogačar (aka “Pogi”, 🐐, three-time TDF Champ, Slovenian) of UAE Emirates and Jonas Vingegaard (two-time TDF champ, Danish) of Visma Lease-a-Bike. They have been long-time rivals and have made the past several editions of the Tour de France really fun to watch. Injuries have marred the past few Tours but both athletes are entering this Tour healthy so hopefully this will be an exciting edition of both at their best. Looking to upset this dynamic is Remco Evenepoel (2022 Vuelta a España champ, Olympic Road Cycling Champ, Belgian) of Soudal Quickstep. Remco had a really bad accident over the winter and has been working hard to recover to be able to contest the GC.

For the rest, there will be lots of action to try win stages, podium positions, top 10 results in the GC, King of the Mountains, and Green Jerseys. Besides that, Cofidis and Picnic PostNL will be hoping for good results to avoid relegation.

Top 5 Stages to Watch

If you can’t watch all of the stages of this year’s Tour (understandable) here are a few stages that I think will be some of the key ones to watch. In addition to my list, check out this post, which has a stage-by-stage calendar that makes it really easy to see which stages are a must-watch!

Stage 10: Not only is it Bastille Day in France, but this is the first mountain stage of the tour with over 4,000 meters of elevation gain across eight! categorized climbs.

Stage 13: A second (mountain) individual time trial gives GC contenders a big opportunity to make a difference.

Stage 14: A mountain stage through the Pyrenées (including col du Tourmalet) should offer some great GC action and beautiful views

Stage 18: This year’s queen stage, featuring many classic Tour de France climbs (like Col de la Loze). If the GC hasn’t been decided at this stage, this is the one to watch!

Stage 19: This is the final mountain stage finishing on a challenging climb. I think how exciting it is will depend on the state of the GC, if it’s close this will be a nail-biter.

There are lots of other really exciting stages in this year’s tour, but these are the top 5 to watch!

Opening Dishes

The food of the Northern region near Belgium, and the next couple of stages that are in the same area, is heartier and perhaps more beer-driven than we might get in other regions of France.

I’ll be kicking of the Tour de France with a Carbonnade Flamande – a beer beef stew served with homemade pomme frites on the side that reflects Lille’s close proximity to Belgium. (And I think everyone knows this but french fries/pommes frites are actually Belgian in origin!)

Stay tuned for lots more French dishes (and pies!) to come.

Get HYPED

Still not excited after this Tour de France preview? Season 3 of the Netflix series Tour de France Unchained came out on July 2nd. Watch it, and some the previous seasons to catch up on the past few Tours and learn some of the key players.

Looking for explainers on some of the nuances of biking? You can see some of my explanations from the Giro blogs here:

I hope you enjoyed this preview of the Tour de France! I am looking forward to sharing the dish and stage highlights on opening weekend! Mark your calendars and à bientôt!