Close Contest Will Make Tour Exciting

Pogacar hot favourite, but Vingegaard can surprise on route that returns to its roots

- 

PARIS — The Tour de France begins on July 5 with Slovenian star Tadej Pogacar's hunger for wins sharing top billing with the magnificent 3,338.8km route in the first edition since 2021 not to venture abroad.

After starts in Florence, Bilbao and Copenhagen, cycling's most prestigious race returns to its roots with an old-school itinerary favouring climbers.

"We decided to bring the Tour home, it was high time after all the foreign starts," said race director Christian Prudhomme.

Every inch of the 2025 edition's 21-stage course is on French soil, for the first time since the pandemic-delayed edition, with most of the country placed on a heat-wave alert in the week leading up to the race.

Temperatures in the south of France topped 40 deg C last weekend, with large swathes of the country bracing for similar conditions in the coming days.

The heatwave is expected to subside, but riders will still be tested to their limits over the peaks and plains of France lauded in cycling folklore as "the world's most beautiful stadium".

"Great settings for great heroes," said Prudhomme, a former TV executive who has transformed the race into a global extravaganza broadcast in 190 countries.