STAGE IS SET FOR IRISH PAIR

Healy and Dunbar carry our hopes in France

- BY DEREK FOLEY

THE 2025 Tour de France will have two Irish riders at the start line.

Ben Healy - who represented Ireland at the Paris Olympics last summer - and Eddie Dunbar, who was a Tokyo 2020 Olympian.

As the peloton speed gets faster - reaching speeds of 100km/h on downhill and sprints - it is now the traffic furniture designed to save car drivers' that is, ironically, the biggest danger to cyclists.

Stephen Roche averaged 36.65km/h winning the 1987 Tour de France but 2023 winner Denmark's Jonas Vingegaard averaged 41.44km/h.

Healy will ride his first Tour with the US-registered EF Education-Easy Post team, one who lost recognised leader Richard Carapaz, third in the Giro, to a gastro infection early this week.

This may see Healy given team support at an identified stage.

"Instinct says we could see Ben begin to prosper once it starts to get hilly," says Ian Dyer, High Performance Coach to the Ireland Olympic cyclists.

"But I think the complexities behind getting a stage race win kind of really rely on you often getting in the main breakaway of the day and being allowed a little bit of rope to make some headway.

"Anything in the big mountains would obviously suit Ben as opposed to the flatter stages because all the teams that have got a sprinter in the race are going to want to try and keep the race together, keep the peloton together to deliver a sprinter to the finish."