Tour de France 2025 live: Route and updates today as Mathieu van der Poel abandons ahead of Stage 16 battle on Mont Ventoux – UK Times

After 13km of neutralised start (making an already tough stage even longer) the riders are underway!

171km to the legendary Mont Ventoux. Which rider will write their name into history today?

Plenty of riders try to get up the road early on, including Wout van Aert and Lenny Martinez, but no move has gone clear just yet.

Here’s what Jonas Vingegaard had to say on Monday’s rest day: “I do think I can win it. Of course, it looks very hard now, it’s a big gap.

“But normally my strength is in the third week. We have to attack.

“I’m also willing to sacrifice second to try to achieve first.”

Visma-Lease a Bike’s sports director Grischa Niermann underlined the urgency of the mission.

“It’s four minutes – you don’t make that up with an attack in the last 500 metres,” Niermann said. “For that to happen, we need to see a weakness in Tadej. So far, he hasn’t shown one. But the Tour is over only when we reach Paris.”

The Mont Ventoux and Col de la Loze await again – but this time, things feel different.

“I’m almost confident to say the route was designed to scare me,” Pogacar said with a smile on Monday.

“But I always look at it as a race situation. I actually like all of these climbs.”

More from the rest day press conferences:

Mathieu van der Poel has been one of the electrifying racers of this Tour, beating Tadej Pogacar in a sprint on stage two to take the yellow jersey, livening up breakaways, and spending 173km up the road on stage nine to get teammate Jonas Rickaert on the podium as most combative rider.

His Tour has been something of an improvised affair; after Jasper Philipsen’s exit on stage three van der Poel was no longer there as key lead-out man for the Belgian sprinter, leaving him freer to stage-hunt and to target the green jersey.

He was third in the standings heading into this final week and with his impressive ability to get into any breakaway – and therefore pick up points at intermediate sprints – had a serious chance of winning it.

Now Jonathan Milan can breathe a sigh of relief, although he’s still got Tadej Pogacar as his closest challenger, and van der Poel will head home to recover after a successful, if abruptly curtailed, Tour.

The 30-year-old had been quiet over the days leading up to the second rest day in mountainous terrain, with Alpecin-Deceuninck confirming that he had been struggling with cold-like symptoms.

He has subsequently been diagnosed with pneumonia and will not start Stage 16 on Tuesday.

The riders are rolling out in Montpellier for the neutralised start; it’s a long one today, around half an hour’s riding before Christian Prudhomme will wave the starting flag.

The design of the stage means there isn’t much terrain for a real elite breakaway to escape on, and the green jersey of Jonathan Milan is likely targeting the intermediate sprint at Chateauneuf-du-Pape 112km into the stage, so Lidl-Trek and the sprinters’ teams may be on hand to help UAE control proceedings during the flatter section.

All that means that we’re likely to see the whole peloton reach the climb together – and there’s one man who can climb faster and more brilliantly than anyone else.

So it seems foolhardy to bet against race leader and modern Cannibal Tadej Pogacar. The yellow jersey has had a day to rest his legs and is likely to come out firing on all cylinders, and while he has claimed wins on many of the Tour’s most legendary climbs, there are always more to add to that list – including Mont Ventoux.

Ventoux comes at the very end of today’s stage, 171.5km from the start town of Montpellier – where the riders enjoyed a rest day – and is the only climb on an intriguing parcours. It’s flat all day until the town of Bedoin at the foot of its lunar slopes, meaning the riders have 130km of flat to plan how they’ll attack.

Its place in Tour mythology is partially down to how rarely it features in the route: the race last had a planned summit finish here in 2016, but that stage was curtailed as a result of expected 100km/h winds, with the finish relocated to Chalet-Reynard, 6km down the mountain.

Thomas de Gendt took the win then; the previous time out, in the 2013 Tour, Chris Froome infamously ran up part of the Giant on his way to victory. Hopefully today the only drama will be of the racing kind.

The first day back after a rest day can throw up some strange results, with some riders slow to get back into the groove. Today’s racing may have an extra edge to it as the top-10 look to shore up their positions and take advantage of any slumps by their rivals.

There wasn’t any significant move in the general classification on Sunday’s stage 15, but Ineos Grenadiers’ Carlos Rodriguez enjoyed back-to-back days in the break and leapfrogged Ben Healy, who was back in the peloton, into ninth place overall.

And here’s what teammate Tadej Pogacar had to say: “I’m more happy for him than when I win – beyond happiness.”

ITV4 then asked him about his over-four minute lead heading into the third week.

“Normally the Tour second week is easier mountains, more for breakaways, the third week is always hardest. But this week was one of the hardest second weeks of the Tours that I’ve ridden,” he said, with the interview interjecting, “because of you!” at which he laughs.

“We still have big, big mountains to come. There’s still seven days or something to Paris and we need to fight until the end.”