Tadej Pogačar might be the clear favourite heading into the 2025 Tour de France, but Marc Madiot has warned that even a rider in imperious form cannot control everything over three weeks of racing. The veteran Groupama-FDJ team boss, who knows the race inside and out, believes Pogačar still faces risks that could derail his campaign.
“You don’t need to be a great expert to say that Pogačar is the number one favourite. But you always have to be wary,” Madiot said in an interview with Cyclism’Actu.
“The Tour is three weeks with a lot of pitfalls: the mountains, the time trials, the tricky stages, the wind, managing the peloton…”
“There are a lot of parameters that you try to control, but that you never master 100%. There are always the vagaries of the race. So, everything remains open, even if on paper, Pogačar ticks more boxes than the others.”
Pogačar comes into the Tour on the back of an extraordinary run, winning 11 of his 22 race days this season. His haul includes the UAE Tour, Strade Bianche, Tour of Flanders, La Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and the Critérium du Dauphiné. With that kind of form, it’s little surprise he tops the pre-race rankings and is viewed as the man to beat in Lille on 5th July.
Still, Madiot is keen to remind everyone that the Tour rarely goes to plan.
The Frenchman, who raced nine Tours himself before becoming a fixture in the team car since the late 1990s, pointed to the relative lack of racing for Pogačar’s biggest rivals as a potential unknown.
“Vingegaard seemed to be in good shape, but he’s still missing a little something to compete with Pogačar across the board. There’s clearly a gap between the two of them and the rest, even if Remco Evenepoel is also at an excellent level. Last year’s hierarchy seems to be confirmed.”
Vingegaard, Evenepoel, and Roglič have all been rebuilding after spring crashes, with altitude camps in Tignes for the former two and Isola 2000 for Pogačar. Between them, the three GC contenders have eight wins in 2025 compared to Pogačar’s eleven.
“We can see that Pogačar is at his best, especially in the mountains. There may still be a few details to adjust on the time trial, but overall, he’s been very strong since the start of the season.”
But as Madiot was keen to underline, the Tour is not just about strength. It’s about surviving all the ways a race of this length can unravel. A crash, a crosswind split, a poorly timed mechanical, a tactical misstep – none of it can be ruled out, even for the best in the world.
