It’s easy to think of the Tour de France peloton as a single, homogenous organism, but within it are dozens of unique experiences and ways of perceiving the race.
Gruber Images, Kristof Ramon
Half an hour separated the winner of stage 6 of the 2025 Tour de France, Education First-EasyPost’s Ben Healy, from the 40-odd riders who finished in the final groups. But over the four and a half hours the race unfolded on the road on Thursday (nearly five for the grupetto), the various worlds that riders inhabit at the Tour were laid out for anyone to see.
In 1909, Baltic German biologist Jakob von Uexküll first explained the concept of Umwelt. The literal definition is “environment,” but more precisely, it refers to how an organism perceives and experiences its world. The term is generally used in reference to sensory perception, but it can also encompass motivation: an organism’s world is built on the stimuli that are most relevant to its biology and needs.
Uexküll explains it with a vivid analogy. “Each house has a number of windows that look over the garden,” he wrote in The Theory of Meaning. “The garden, as viewed from the house, changes according to the windows’ structure and design. In no way is it a part of a bigger world; it is the only world that belongs to the house – its Umwelt.” That is: for each organism, the sum of its perceptions and experiences makes up its entire world, and that world – that perspective – belongs only and exclusively to it. And while it’s easy to think of the riders in the Tour de France all inhabiting the same world and sharing the same world, there are myriad and diverse Umwelten among each of the 179 riders left in the race.
The one that stuck: Ben Healy and the art of the long shot
Ben Healy’s Tour de France win was anything but lucky.
At the front of stage 6 were the eight riders in the breakaway, ranging from the slightly built Irish climber Eddie Dunbar to all-world Classics star Mathieu van der Poel. At the back? The group of sprinters and leadout men who gave up any hope of staying in the peloton after just 30 km of the hard-fought 201.5 km stage. And in the middle, a pack of riders alternately trying to bridge the gap to the breakaway and join them, or bring them back altogether.
This post is for paying subscribers only
Subscribe now
Already have an account? Sign in
Did we do a good job with this story?
👍Yep
👎Nope