Tadej Pogačar vs Jonas Vingegaard: can Pogačar be stopped as the 2025 Tour de France gets underway?

Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard go into the 2025 Tour de France as the two favourites.

How they line up

1. Climbing

These two Tour de France goliaths have opposing styles in the mountains: Vingegaard is the master of measured, sustained efforts; Pogačar the epitome of explosive panache.

The Slovenian may appear to be the shoo-in here, having earned most of his 6:17mins advantage at the 2024 Tour on uphill finishes, but the 2025 route will bring back bad memories for the 26-year-old.

Mont Ventoux, where Vingegaard exposed a chink in Pogačar’s armour in 2021, returns, as does the Pyrenean climb of Hautacam, where Pogačar lost a minute to Vingegaard in 2022 to all-but-seal the Dane’s maiden Tour triumph.

In the Alps, the Col de La Loze, the scene of Pogačar’s greatest humbling, is back again for the Queen Stage.

It was here in 2023 that Pogačar suffered his worst day at the Tour, cracking and losing nearly six minutes to Vingegaard, who this year will arrive fresh from two pre-Tour altitude camps in Spain’s Sierra Nevada.

Pogačar will hope his words over the team radio that day – “I’m gone, I’m dead” – don’t come back to haunt him.

• Winner: Jonas Vingegaard

2. X-Factor

This one’s easy: Pogačar. No other rider has the charisma, flair and race-winning aggression of the all-conquering world champion.

Vingegaard’s efficient stoicism is extremely effective in its own right – the Dane will be highly motivated to regain his Tour crown – but Pogačar has the crowd-pleasing persona to attack again and again, and more often than not, finish with victory.

• Winner: Tadej Pogačar

3. Sprinting

No, we’re not talking about Jasper Philipsen-style sprinting here, but the rider who can engage their fast-twitch fibres at the flick of a switch in a dash to the line, notably in an uphill finish.

Vingegaard is something of a diesel compared to the turbo-charged Pogačar.

Indeed, the Dane is an all-out GC specialist, whereas his Slovenian rival has shown his ability on short, full-gas climbs already this year by pushing Mathieu van der Poel close at Milan-Sanremo and winning twice in the Ardennes Classics.

Seventeen-time stage winner Pogačar will be expecting to hoover up the bonus seconds available at stage finishes, and will want to apply the pressure early when the Mûr de Bretagne returns at the end of week one.

It may only be a 2km climb but, with double-digit ramps, it’s well-suited to Pog’s explosive style.

• Winner: Tadej Pogačar

4. Time trials

The 2025 route features two individual time trials with very different parcours.

Stage five is one for the specialists, with 33km to cover largely on wide, flat roads.

We’re backing Vingegaard to edge this one (this is a big opportunity for Remco Evenepoel to make an early statement too).

Stage 13, meanwhile, comes deep in the Pyrenees, with an 11km test that starts on the valley floor at 945m and rises to the ski town of Peyragudes at 1,580m.

This one’s a tight call, but Vingegaard, who produced one of the most astonishing time-trial performances in recent memory en route to his 2023 Tour de France win, could edge it.

• Winner: Jonas Vingegaard

5. Equipment

With the pace of road-bike development showing no sign of slowing, Pogačar already has two new bikes at his disposal – the Colnago Y1Rs aero bike and the Italian brand’s latest all-rounder, the V5Rs.

Meanwhile, we had the chance to inspect Vingegaard's new Cervélo S5, which has a 1x drivetrain and new, deeper Reserve wheels

Neither rider will be left wanting in cycling’s biggest shop window, but Visma are the more adventurous innovators of the two teams, experimenting this year with time-trial helmets in road races, and switching Vingegaard onto tiny 150mm cranks in a bid to boost efficiency.

Earlier this year, Vingegaard also revealed he’s spent time in the wind tunnel to improve his position on the bike.

• Winner: Jonas Vingegaard

6. Team support

The tables have turned here in recent years.

Vingegaard’s Visma-Lease a Bike squad took on the mantle of being cycling’s super team from Ineos Grenadiers, and peaked in 2023 by putting a rider on the top step of the podium at all three Grand Tours – the Giro d’Italia (Primož Roglič), Tour de France (Jonas Vingegaard) and Vuelta a España (Sepp Kuss).

Richard Plugge’s outfit have faltered since then though, suffering misfortune and missteps.

UAE Team Emirates XRG, meanwhile, have gone from strength to strength, with Adam Yates, Juan Ayuso and João Almeida all key lieutenants for Pogačar.

• Winner: Tadej Pogačar

7. Form

Pogačar and Vingegaard took very different routes to the Tour. Pogačar raced eight times from February to April, winning on five occasions – UAE Tour, Strade Bianche, Tour of Flanders, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège – and finishing on the podium at the rest.

Vingegaard won the Volta ao Algarve but then crashed out of Paris-Nice in March.

However, Vingegaard’s training and race schedule has been fully focused on the Tour since that crash.

He’s a rider who builds slowly into form, and fatigue may be a factor for Pogačar – even if he's showed no signs of slowing so far.

This year's Critérium du Dauphiné, a week-long stage race in June that serves as the Tour's main form finder, was a sign of how the two riders are progressing. Pogačar claimed overall victory, 59 seconds ahead of Vingegaard.

We’re handing this one to Pogačar, cycling’s master plate-spinner.

• Winner: Tadej Pogačar

8. Recovery

Pog’s former coach, Iñigo San Millán, has long credited the Slovenian’s recovery – both between individual efforts and from one day to the next – as a key reason behind his success.

“That’s a great advantage when you’re attacking a climb, as you can keep on attacking,” said San Millán.

When the going gets tough, Pogačar gets going, and he simply wouldn’t be able to maintain his hectic race schedule without having a superhuman ability to recover.

Vingegaard has shown his own resilience, though, coming back from his horrific crash in last year’s Tour of the Basque Country to not only race the Tour, but finish second.

Since then, Vingegaard may only have finished two races (Tour of Poland and Volta ao Algarve) but he’s won both.

• Winner: Tadej Pogačar

Overall score

So there we have it. Comparing the two Tour de France favourites across sprinting, climbing, kit and more, Pogačar wins by 5 points to 3.

Many people will instinctively chalk Pogačar up as the outright favourite. But anything can happen in the Tour de France, and we can't wait to see which of these two champions ultimately comes out on top.

• Tadej Pogačar: 5
• Jonas Vingegaard: 3