{"id":243515,"date":"2025-07-06T20:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T20:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/243515\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T20:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T20:24:10","slug":"tour-de-france-2025-van-der-poel-denies-pogacar-in-sprint-finish-and-takes-yellow-jersey-tour-de-france-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/243515\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France 2025: Van der Poel denies Pogacar in sprint finish and takes yellow jersey | Tour de France 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mathieu van der Poel won stage two of the 2025 Tour de France<\/a> into Boulogne-sur-Mer for Alpecin-\u00adDeceuninck, claiming the race lead from his teammate Jasper Philipsen after a quick succession of short climbs inside the final kilometres exploded the peloton on the approach to the Channel port.<\/p>\n

The Dutchman thwarted Tadej Pogacar\u2019s attempt to take the 100th win of his career, outsprinting the defending champion on the steady final climb of the Boulevard Auguste Mariette.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe final was actually harder than I thought,\u201d said Van der Poel. \u201cI was really motivated. It\u2019s four years since I won my first stage<\/a> on the Tour, so it was about time I won a second one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philipsen, who had started the stage in the yellow jersey after winning stage one<\/a> to Lille on Saturday, was distanced in the closing kilometres and Van der Poel took the race lead from the Belgian sprinter.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople said I was a favourite, but if you see which riders were in front, on the climbs, I did a really good job today to be there,\u201d said Van der Poel, winner of the 2023 World Road Race Championships in Glasgow<\/a>. \u201cThe climbs were harder than I expected and [ridden at] a hard pace. It was a nervous day again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pogacar\u2019s main rival, Jonas \u00adVingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike, followed the Slovenian across the finish line, with the Olympic champion, Remco Evenepoel, distanced on Saturday\u2019s stage, showing greater vigilance to also finish in the front group.<\/p>\n

Away from the Tour, Vingegaard\u2019s wife, Trine Vingegaard Hansen, told the Danish newspaper Politiken that the Visma-Lease a Bike team is pushing her husband \u201ctoo far\u201d. \u201cI\u2019m afraid he\u2019s burning the candle at both ends,\u201d she said of the double Tour winner. \u201cI think people sometimes forget the human being behind the athlete. It could all backfire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Primoz Roglic, only a year ago characterised as one of the Tour\u2019s \u201cbig four\u201d, finished in the lead group after ceding ground in Lille, but has done little so far to dispel the impression that he has relinquished any \u00adlingering hopes of contending for the overall title.<\/p>\n

A wet Tour de France peloton during stage two. Photograph: Martin Div\u00ed\u0161ek\/EPA<\/p>\n

The Slovenian is the winner of the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a four times and also the Giro d\u2019Italia in 2023, but told the media as the race began that he \u201cdidn\u2019t really care\u201d and just wanted to \u201cmake it to Paris for a glass of champagne\u201d. He has been anonymous so far.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old was, with his Bora Hansghrohe teammate Florian Lipowitz, among those who missed Saturday\u2019s \u00addecisive split in the front group on the fast approach to Lille. \u201cThe guys were asleep,\u201d Roglic\u2019s sports director, Enrico \u00adGasparotto, said of their costly error on the opening stage. \u201cWe talked about that stretch, the wind and the related dangers, but they were surprised. We are all aware of the opportunity we wasted: Roglic and Lipowitz lost the chance to gain time on Remco. We learned an important lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worse befell the hapless French rider Benjamin Thomas, who crashed on Saturday\u2019s stage while fighting his compatriot Matt\u00e9o Vercher for a single point in the mountains \u00adclassification on Mont Cassel. He woke on Sunday morning to the news that his bike, along with 10 others from the Cofidis team, worth about \u20ac140,000 (\u00a3120,000), had been stolen from their vehicles overnight.<\/p>\n

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Ineos Grenadiers are also already on the back foot, having lost the time-trialling powerhouse Filippo Ganna on stage one to a concussion, while their team leader, Carlos Rodr\u00edguez, and the 2018 Tour winner, Geraint Thomas, both missed the decisive break in Saturday\u2019s dramatic finale in Lille.<\/p>\n

Quick GuideReusser wins stage one time trial to take Giro d’Italia pink jerseyShow<\/p>\n

Movistar’s Marlen Reusser<\/b> won the individual time trial opening stage of the Giro d’Italia Women to claim the race leader’s pink jersey.\u00a0The Swiss national time trial champion went 12 seconds quicker than Lotte Kopecky on the\u00a014.2km course through Bergamo to claim the stage win and will wear the maglia rosa during Monday’s second stage from\u00a0Clusone to Aprica. The Italian\u00a0Elisa Longo Borghini finished third, 16 seconds behind\u00a0Reusser.<\/p>\n

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Both Rodr\u00edguez and Thomas lost a further 31sec to the front group on the run-in to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and are now 1min 16sec behind Pogacar after the opening weekend.<\/p>\n

Sir Dave Brailsford, Ineos\u2019s \u00adreturning supremo, and Thomas, his management protege in waiting, already have much to ponder. \u201cI should have stopped last year, to be honest,\u201d the 39-year-old Welshman observed drily on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Monday is another day, but there is yet another tricky stage to come, through the Nord and towards the Channel, this time to Dunkirk, in which the cobbles of Mont Cassel and the crosswinds off the sea will again play their part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mathieu van der Poel won stage two of the 2025 Tour de France into Boulogne-sur-Mer for Alpecin-\u00adDeceuninck, claiming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-243515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114808164419252767","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}