Cyclists competing in the 2025 Tour de France rumbled into the city of Toulouse on Wednesday, July 16, and some of them no doubt reflected on the handful of compelling—and downright zany—situations to come out of the event’s first 11 stages.
Throughout this Tour there has been bad blood, barfing, blogging, and all manners of drama and controversy. Yep—pretty standard stuff for pro cycling’s biggest event.
For cycling fans who haven’t followed the Tour’s every twist and turn, I’ve highlighted five storylines from the event’s opening half to catch you up to speed.
Netflix Bids Adieu
In June, Netflix released all eight episodes of the third season of its docuseries Tour de France Unchained. Amid the announcement of the season was the revelation that season three would be the final one.
Unchained debuted in 2022 as the cycling-centric version of Netflix’s hyper-successful Formula 1: Drive to Survive. And like the F1 show, Unchained took viewers behind the scenes at the race, and showed the sometimes robotic cyclists as being capable of sadness, jealousy, and other human emotions. Yep—it brought personality to a sport that, for a century, has churned out stoic and boring heroes.
Back in 2022 I wrote that Unchained had the very real potential to convert millions of new cycling fans due to the series’ ability to boil a confusing and nuanced sport down to its most basic elements.
I can’t say whether or not Unchained succeeded in this goal. But I can attest that the series had to walk a narrow storytelling tightrope that ultimately caused me to stop watching.
The Tour is an international event with fans spread across the globe, but Unchained was shot and edited by French production firm QuadBox, and it was scripted for Netflix France. Thus, the series focused ample attention on French teams, French cyclists, and all things French cycling.
Here’s the thing: the Tour’s best riders today hail from Slovenia, Great Britain, Denmark, and Belgium. Americans are OK, too. The French, meanwhile, have become bit players in their own event. No Frenchman has won the Tour since 1984, and that drought is likely to carry on for decades to come.
And while the Tour’s international heroes all speak English, French cyclists, for the most part, only speak French.
Alas, to watch Unchained was to immerse yourself in the petty, small-potatoes drama surrounding French cycling—and to absorb this not-so vital information via subtitles. In my humble opinion, this was not a recipe for attracting the masses.
Crashes and Poop: Micheal Woods’ Blog Garners Attention
Canadian Tour de France hero Michael Woods has been writing daily blogs throughout the 2025 Tour de France, published on his personal site and on our sister site, Velo.
Woods is a very talented writer, and his essays shed light on important moments in the race. On July 8, Woods wrote about crashes that have occurred, and rider safety. Pileups happen every day at the Tour, and on the eve of the race, the organizer, ASO, chided riders for taking risks that resulted in accidents.
Woods very smartly pointed out that the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO) and the sport’s governing body, Union Cycliste International (UCI) are in charge of establishing the rules of competition that govern safety. If these bodies were truly concerned with crashes, Woods points out, they would alter regulations to try and curb crashes. “ASO telling riders ‘you need to take less risk’ is like the NBA telling Steph Curry, ‘you need to shoot fewer threes.’ It does nothing.” he wrote.
The piece lead to a flurry of think pieces and essays on various cycling websites, and boosted Woods as perhaps the smartest voice in the peloton.
A few days later, Woods penned another blog about a somewhat delicate situation. During stage 10, Woods suffered a gastrointestinal emergency during the race. After fighting back stomach cramps, he had to pull over to the side of the road, sprint into some tourist’s recreational vehicle, and do his business.
“To the poor, very kind, and dumbfounded, man who opened his RV door to me, I want to first say thank you, but also apologize profusely for the state I left your bathroom in,” Woods wrote. He still finished the stage, despite the emergency poop stop.
No Love Lost Between Tour Rivals
The current standings of the Tour have Irish rider Ben Healy in first, with defending champion Pogacar in second, followed by Belgian rider Remco Evenepoel, and then Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard in fourth.
But as anyone who has watched the race can attest, the race for the yellow jersey is a two-horse race between perennial rivals Pogacar and Vingegaard. Of the last five Tours, Pogacar has won three (2020, 2021, 2024) and Vingegaard has won two (2022, 2023). Anytime the road points uphill, these two guys zip away from the peloton and attack each other.
Vingegaard’s team, Dutch squad Visma-Lease a Bike, has adopted a curiously aggressive strategy at this year’s Tour. Big teams often play it safe during the race’s flat opening week and ride in the peloton, saving valuable energy for the mountainous second and third weeks. But not Visma—the team has upped the pace relentlessly on the flat and hilly stages, sent riders up the road in aggressive attacks, and generally tried to force Pogacar and his UAE Team Emirates teammates to also burn energy.
The strategy of attacking early and often left the peloton exhausted, and prompted plenty of criticism from pundits, including former Tour winners. It also generated some strong words from Pogacar, who called the team’s racing “annoying.”
In a sport infamous for austere vibes and boring and bland quotes, that’s akin to insulting a rival’s outfit, spouse, and taste in music all at the same time.
Five Barfs Across 100 Miles
Cycling fans raised a collective eyebrow during the opening moments of the Tour’s ninth stage when teammates Mathieu van Der Poel and Jonas Rickaert on the Alpecin-Deceuninck squad accelerated from the gun and sprinted away from the peloton.
Van der Poel is one of the strongest riders in the bunch, but the long-distance attack seemed destined to fail, given the route’s flat profile. On flatter days, the peloton can easily control the speed and gobble up breakaways well before the line.
But the two soldiered on and rode together as hard as they could for 100 miles. At one point, it looked like van der Poel would hold off the charging peloton. Alas, he was caught and passed by the group within spitting distance of the finish line.
After the stage, Rickaert told reporters what it was like to pedal 400 watts for four consecutive hours—the effort required to ride alongside van der Poel.
“My stomach couldn’t handle the effort. I vomited five times,” Rickaert told the Belgian broadcaster Sporza.
No guts, no glory.
An Irish Leader on an American Team
As I mentioned earlier, the current leader of the Tour is an Irish rider named Ben Healy, and he races for an American team, EF Education-Easy Post. It’s the first time an Irishman has led the Tour since 1987, and the first time that an Irish guy on an American squad has held this position.
Healy grabbed the yellow jersey during stage 10 by accelerating into a breakaway on a stage with short to medium-sized hills, and then holding off the late charge from Pogacar.
On paper, Healy does not have the pedigree to win the Tour. He excels on short and steep climbs, but has never soared up monster mountains in the Alps and Pyrenees alongside Pogacar or Vingegaard, the two best climbers int he sport.
But hey, this is the Tour, and every few years we see lesser riders go above and beyond their perceived limits while fighting for the yellow jersey.
Now the question becomes: how long can Healy hold the jersey until Pogacar takes it back? Thursday’s 12th stage takes in two massive mountains in the Pyrenees. Whether or not Healy can summon the strength to go above and beyond what we expect of him is a storyline I plan to follow.
