Key events
Martinez leads over the Tourmalet
93km to go: Lenny Martinez takes the points on the mountain summit, and leads the polka dot jersey all on his own. Pogacar may have plenty to say on that. The scenes as he takes his way over are superb, as Martinez meanders through the mist, the noise deafening. There are few better sights in sport.
95km to go: Leaders over the Tourmalet from the sports’s golden era:
1989: Robert Millar (now called Pippa York), 1990: Miguel Martinez-Torres, 1991: Claudio Chiappucci, 1993: Tony Rominger, 1994: Richard Virenque, 1995 :Richard Virenque
Whiffy in some cases, but golden days nonetheless. Last year, it was Oier Lazkano.
97km to go: Lenny Martinez is after mountain points. He wants the jersey for himself, rather than Pogacar. Ben O’Connor has been dropped.
Remco Evenepoel abandons
99km to go: Evenepoel has been handing out bottles to fans, and chatting to his team car. He shoos away the TV but the picture is eventually captured: he’s soon in the back of the Soudal–Quick-Step car, and that’s that. Skjelmoose, an earlier crasher, has abandoned. Ben Healy and Wout van Aert are both struggling. Simon Yates is off the back of the pace, too. The heat to rain change has done for a few riders here.
100km to go: Evenepoel dropping back
It’s not pleasant to see, and he’s been struggling a while for sickness. He’s 45 seconds back, dropping off everyone, and an abandonment cannot be ruled out. No teammates around him, suggesting Soudal are planning without him. A sad sight. Ivan Romeo, the Spanish champion, looks even worse. There’s sickness in the pack. The gap from the breakaway to the yellow jersey is just over two minutes. Is this a day for the break or another Pog v Ving battle?
105 km to go: Evenepoel in trouble? Or is this tactical? Thymen Arensman and Lenny Martinez, the polka, lead the break. Einer Rubio, the Colombian, is up there, with Valentin Paret-Peintre completing the quartet, with chasers wanting to get involved.
107 km to go: From wikipedia:
Some Frenchmen believe that Tourmalet translates into “bad trip” or “bad detour” because in French Tour translates into “trip” and mal translates into “bad”; however, the correct language to translate from is Gascon, not French, because of the mountain’s location in the Gascony region. Then Tour becomes “distance”, which is spelled “tur” but pronounced “tour” and mal is translated into “mountain”. The translation from Gascon to English then becomes “Distance Mountain”.[6]
Tourmalet is also a cheese made from sheep milk produced in these mountains.
Milan takes the intermediate sprint
112km to go: Lidl-Trek control the sprint, and Milan gets his heart’s desire, pretty much uncontested, and he claims the 20 points. Mathieu van der Poel and Biniam Girmay trail him in. The gap to Pogacar is extended to 48 points. Time to sit up for Milan. Ominously, UAE seem to want to take over, and that spells trouble for the GC hopefuls. Milan drops back, and is soon 1’ 30” down.
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115km to go: The gap is closed down, and the trio are on their radios, asked to conserve energy for what follows the sprint. Milan’s team are leading the peloton. Will Pogacar have a dig? That will indicate whether he wants to be the new “Cannibal” or not. He probably does, you know.
120km to go: Skjelmoose has a long day ahead of him, unless he choose to abandon. G et al open up a gap as they enter the foothills of Tourmalet. Here’s where the hard work really starts.
125km to go: Mattias Skjelmose is the man down, and he’s the mountaineer in the Lidl-Trek team. Little chance of him competing today. He hit some road furniture – thankfully padded. He gets back on after running repairs are carried out. Meanwhile, an another band of escapees, and it’s Thomas back in there again, with Pacher and Vercher, two Frenchmen.
130 km to go: Another small group off the front, and again they are closed off. It feels like that sprint will see all the pack competing together. Jonathan Milan is making sure he’s in that sprint by leading the entire field. Using up energy? Perhaps, but that sprint in Esquieze-Sere is his target for the day. There’s been a crash in the field, and it looks bad.
140 km to go: As Lourdes arrives. a breakaway that may be worth its healing salts, is forming. Hard work is being put in as they depart the town that features the Grotto of the Apparitions. But no, denied. The peloton isn’t letting anyone away just yet. There will be riders already thinking of the grupetto but they will be made to race before anything like that can form. This is a long old day in the saddle. Geraint Thomas is in the vanguard. Why not? One last ride into the sunset for “G”?
Steff Cras abandons
145 km to go: Steff Cras, the Total Energies GC rider, has abandoned. He has the pained look of a man awaiting the beaten, backseat drive up the mountain in a team car. An ambulance joins him to check on him. Sickness appears the problem for the Belgian, who is shedding salt tears and being consoled. Lourdes is up ahead, and even those healing powers could have kept him in the race.
150 km to go: The road snaking inexorably upwards, but little time to take in the countryside, featuring sheep looking down on the peloton. Fred Wright, of Bahrain Victorious, eyes an escape on roads that wind away and offer places to hide from the pack. He’ll need company to make more of this escape.
160 km to go: Jonathan Milan, the points leader, has gone on a wildcat attack. He hopes to stay away for the sprint that’s 45km away, and he can hold off Pog from taking his green jersey away. He finds himself chased down as 22 seconds of a lead drops away rather swiftly.
170 km to go: Matteo Trentin, the veteran, and Pogacar share a fist bump. The roads continue to show the effects of the downpour. There’s word of a crash at the back of the pack. How serious? Clement Berthet, the Decathlon rider, has road rash and is having his knee and elbow looked at. The doctor patches him up.
180 km to go: Quentin Pacher sets off, and fancies a home breakaway. He will soon have company as the peloton snakes into le campagne, the roads slowly narrowing as they exit the boulevards. A downhill pulls Pacher back into the pack who are flying along.
Off we go in Pau!
They idle out of the mountain city, a beautiful place, trees full of green, refreshed by the summer rain. Bryan Coquard is not among them, his broken finger ruling him out. He was struggling to brake. Christian Prudhomme gets them launched and off go the attempted escapees.
We approach the départ réel, the reality of a heavy day in the saddle dawns. Here we go!
In Pau, the rain is coming down but that’s cooled the temperature down to 19 degrees.
In summary, Pogacar rules the waves, and the hills, and almost the flat, too.
Eddy Merckx is the only cyclist to have won all three individual classifications in a single Tour de France. He achieved this in 1969, winning yellow, green and polka dot jersey. That’s the only time that’s been done on a Grand Tour.
Top five points leaders
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1. Jonathan Milan (ITA) Lidl – Trek 231
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2. Tadej Pogacar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates – XRG 203
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3. Mathieu van der Poel (NED) Alpecin – Deceuninck 173
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4. Biniam Girmay (ERI) Intermarché – Wanty 154
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5. Tim Merlier (BEL) Soudal Quick-Step 150
King of the Mountains top five
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1. Tadej Pogacar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates – XRG 37
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2. Lenny Martinez (FRA) Bahrain Victorious 27
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3. Jonas Vingegaard (DEN) Team Visma – Lease a Bike “
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4. Michael Woods (CAN) Israel – Premier Tech 22
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5. Ben Healy (IRL) EF Education – EasyPost 16
Here’s the Top 10 GC
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1. Tadej Pogacar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates – XRG 45:45:51
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2. Jonas Vingegaard (DEN) Team Visma – Lease a Bike +4:07
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3. Remco Evenepoel (BEL) Soudal Quick-Step +7:24
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4. Florian Lipowitz (GER) Red Bull – BORA – +7:30
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5. Oscar Onley (GBR) Team Picnic PostNL +8:11
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6. Kévin Vauquelin (FRA) Arkéa – B&B Hotels +8:15
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7. Primoz Roglic (SLO) Red Bull – BORA – +8:50
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8. Tobias Johannessen (NOR) Uno-X Mobility +10:36
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9. Felix Gall (AUT) Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale +11:43
Team -
10. Matteo Jorgenson (USA) Team Visma – Lease a Bike +14:15
Here’s the official Tour de France map of today’s stage 14.
Some Col du Tourmalet data via Strava:
Key details
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Distance: 18.83 km
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Elevation Gain: +1,398 m
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Average Gradient: 7.65%
KOM (fastest time)
This was set on 20th July 2019, and you can view the activity here.
Pro v amateur comparison
Jeremy Whittle on Friday’s time-trial triumph.
The second time trial in the 2025 Tour was expected to further confirm Pogacar’s supremacy over the peloton and so it proved, as the defending champion extended his lead to over four minutes with his fourth stage win in this year’s race and the 21st Tour stage of his career.
Riding a standard road bike instead of a time trial setup, he was the fastest at every time check on the 10.9km climb, in many ways a carbon copy of Thursday’s ascent to Hautacam, where he also triumphed.
Preamble
Le Tour is Pogacar’s. That much we know, as Tadej, as his good lady wife calls him, has been devastating as soon as the race reached the mountains, previous rivals unable to live with him. This, let us recall, is a rider who has also competed for the Classics all year; this isn’t supposed to happen in the modern age. Though Pogacar is rewriting history and collecting stages at a rate that must have Mark Cavendish twitching. The gap is over four minutes, just a crack on a mountain pass away but can Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel rely on that?
Today, the middle Saturday, is another journey into the heart of the Pyrenees. Time for a breakaway? The truth is nobody is strong enough to break away from Pogacar. And as he said himself: “it’s the Tour, you cannot just back off if there’s the opportunity for a stage win. You never know when it’s your last day on the Tour.”
William Fotheringham’s verdict is thus:
A mountain classic: Cols de Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde, plus the pull up to the ski station, where winners include Federico Bahamontes, Greg LeMond, Hinault and Robert Millar, now known as Philippa York. Four big passes make this a decisive day in the mountains prize with a ton of points on offer; the stage winner will probably be a climber who’s not figuring overall. Enric Mas of Spain might fit that bill, or the Austrian Felix Gall.