Thymen Arensman secured his second stage victory in this year’s Tour de France, adding to his previous win on stage 14.
Tadej Pogacar is poised to claim his fourth Tour de France title after successfully defending his lead on the race’s final mountain stage. Thymen Arensman clinched a dramatic victory following a challenging ascent to La Plagne.
Barring an unforeseen event, Pogacar is set to confirm his triumph in Paris on Sunday, having finished alongside Jonas Vingegaard and conceding only two bonus seconds to his rival.
The Slovenian cyclist currently holds a lead of four minutes and 24 seconds, with two predominantly flat stages remaining.
In a thrilling conclusion to the final stage in the high mountains, the top four general classification contenders pursued Arensman to the finish line at 2,052m above sea level, with Vingegaard ultimately falling just two seconds short of the Dutch rider.
Britain’s Oscar Onley, 22, lost ground in the final two kilometers, hindering his pursuit of a remarkable podium finish, which allowed Florian Lipowitz to solidify his hold on third place.
Organizers modified Friday’s route due to a herd of diseased cattle on the Col des Saisies, reducing the stage distance from 130km to 95km and eliminating two of the five planned categorized climbs in the Alps.
The revised route still featured two hors categorie climbs, following the three tackled during Thursday’s queen stage, with the Col du Pre preceding the finish on La Plagne.
Saturday’s penultimate stage is a rolling 184.2km route from Nantua, expected to favor breakaway specialists as it traverses the hills of the Jura towards Pontarlier.
After resisting the urge to chase victory on Thursday’s queen stage, Pogacar once again demonstrated that his primary focus remains on safeguarding his significant lead in the general classification.
He appeared poised to launch an attack in pursuit of Arensman and his fifth stage win in this year’s race, but instead, he closely monitored Vingegaard, following suit when his main rival launched a late bid for victory.
This is set to be the sixth consecutive edition of the race won by either Pogacar or two-time champion Vingegaard, with the Slovenian rider once again proving his superior form in 2025.
With considerable time gaps separating most riders in the top 10, the battle for third place between Lipowitz and Onley remained finely balanced after the Briton’s impressive performance up the Col de la Loze brought him within 22 seconds of an unlikely podium finish.
Team Picnic-PostNL rider Onley, competing in only his second Tour, has shown increasing strength throughout the race, but it was the Scot who faltered first on the 19.1km final climb, which featured an average gradient of 7.2%.
Having demonstrated his form with a podium finish at the Tour de Suisse last month, Onley entered the race targeting a stage win, but he is now poised to leave with a reputation as one of the sport’s most promising young riders, with fourth place all but secured.
This was Arensman’s and British team Ineos Grenadiers’ day, however. The 25-year-old broke away in the final 13km after following an initial move by Pogacar and Vingegaard, and, to his surprise, remained unchallenged.
“I feel absolutely destroyed,” said Arensman.
“I can’t believe it. Winning one stage in the Tour from a breakaway was already unbelievable, but to do it against the GC group, against the strongest riders in the world, feels like I’m dreaming.
“I don’t know what I just did.”
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