Cycling · international
Pogačar seals fourth Tour as Van Aert transforms the Paris finale
Tadej Pogačar completed a fourth Tour de France victory on 27 July, finishing 4:24 clear of Jonas Vingegaard after a finale won by Wout van Aert.
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A fourth overall victory
Tadej Pogačar won the 2025 Tour de France on 27 July, completing the three-week race in 76 hours, 00 minutes and 32 seconds. Denmark's Jonas Vingegaard finished second, 4 minutes and 24 seconds behind, while Germany's Florian Lipowitz took third at 11 minutes. For the Slovenian, the result added another yellow jersey to those won in 2020, 2021 and 2024 and extended his run of Tour podium finishes to six consecutive appearances.
Pogačar also won the mountains classification for the third time. His four stage victories, supplemented by Tim Wellens's win on stage 15, gave UAE Team Emirates-XRG five stage successes. The final standings therefore reflected more than a carefully protected lead: the eventual champion had repeatedly won the day's contest as well as accumulating the advantage needed for Paris.
The decisive mountain gains
The first major Pyrenean confrontation at Hautacam on 17 July supplied the clearest separation. Pogačar attacked with 12.5 kilometres remaining, dropped his rivals and finished 2:10 ahead of Vingegaard. He reclaimed yellow after Ben Healy's two days in the lead. The performance arrived one day after Pogačar had crashed in Toulouse, making the immediate response particularly significant.
He followed it with another victory in the 10.9-kilometre uphill time trial to Peyragudes on 18 July. His time of 23:00 beat Vingegaard by 36 seconds and moved their overall gap to 4:07. These consecutive wins established a substantial buffer before the Alps. Vingegaard continued to challenge, but the later mountain stages became a test of whether he could reverse losses already built into the classification.
A new shape for the Paris finale
The closing 132.3-kilometre stage from Mantes-la-Ville included three ascents of the Côte de la Butte Montmartre. Rain made the roads slippery, so the organisers, commissaires and rider representatives agreed to stop the general-classification clock at the fourth passage of the finish line, before the Montmartre circuit. The stage victory remained open, with the overall contenders' times protected.
Pogačar attacked on each ascent, but Van Aert countered near the top of the last climb and rode alone to the Champs-Élysées. The Belgian won in 3:07:30, 19 seconds ahead of Davide Ballerini, Matej Mohorič and Pogačar, who finished in that order. It was Van Aert's tenth Tour stage win and his first since the 2022 Rocamadour time trial.
The other prizes and the lasting picture
Lipowitz paired his first Tour podium with the white jersey for best young rider, while Jonathan Milan won the points competition on his Tour debut. Their achievements provided two distinct breakthroughs alongside the familiar Pogačar-Vingegaard rivalry. The podium's eleven-minute spread also showed how far the contest for yellow had separated from the battle for third.
In his official post-race interview, Pogačar credited the team's atmosphere and identified the second week as decisive. He also described how racing against Vingegaard had raised both riders' level. Paris supplied a final piece of competitive theatre, but the fourth title rested on the earlier mountain gains and their successful defence across the rest of the route.
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