The 2025 Tour de France route will be revealed in a few days. And as they always do in mid-fall, Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO)—the race’s organizing body—will hold a press conference revealing all of the details of the Grand Boucle. How will its parcours sinew through France? How many mountain stages there will be? How many sprint stages? Will we finally see a return of the team time trial?
If I had to guess, the 2025 Tour de France that will be revealed on October 29 will likely resemble the last few editions. The stages will be harder overall, providing more fireworks from the instant the flag drops. The race will be backloaded with mountain stages, which serves to keep the top of the table as close as possible for as long as possible. And it’s unlikely we’ll see more than a pair of time trials (both of which will more than likely be individual races).
And you know what, that’ll be perfectly fine in the end. The Tour de France has a formula that works better than any other sporting event on Earth. And when a formula works, it’s generally best to leave it alone.
But what if the Tour de France could be better? Or, if not better, at least more exciting? What if we can improve on “perfectly fine”?
If we learned anything from last year’s Tour, is that a bit of variety can make for a very intriguing product. I’m speaking specifically about Stage 9, which saw the peloton taking on 32.2 kilometers of gravel over fourteen sectors, giving the day the feel of a thrilling Spring Classic. But more on that in a second.
So, what changes could ASO make to the Tour de France to make it more exciting? After all, thanks to the pandemic-era global bicycling boom and the popularity of Netflix’s Tour de France: Unchained, millions of new eyeballs have been tuning into the last few Tours. The easiest way to turn the intrigued into the invested is by creating an exciting product for them to enjoy.
Related StoryShorter Stages
If you watched the Tour de France Femmes, you know it was one of the most exciting stage races we’ve seen in a while. Every day felt like a must-watch, where anything could and often did happen. Why was that?
Partly, it’s because the Tour de France Femmes is much shorter, with just eight stages, which raises the stakes considerably. A bad day on the bike is harder to recover from for the women than it is for the men.
But the biggest reason the women’s race was such a thrill? The stages are significantly shorter than the men’s (full disclosure: I’ve argued before, in this very publication, that women’s races should be as long as the men’s. Women have the strength and ability to handle the same distances. But hey, I reserve the right to be inconsistent!). On average, the women raced 118.7 kilometers per day. That jumps to 134.7 if you exclude the 6.3-kilometer time trial.
By comparison, the men averaged 166.5 kilometers a day. Without their two time trials, it’s 181 kilometers per day—long, long days for both viewers and riders. And for riders, longer stages often mean less urgency.
Shorter stages make for spicier racing. And spicier racing means better entertainment.
The ASO has tried to liven up the men’s race with more stages frontloaded with climbs or hilly sections. Plus, this generation of racers seems eager to attack all day long, unlike those of yesteryear, who treated the early parts of stages more like a group ride than a WorldTour race. Shorter stages would only crank that up.
Now, I’m not saying every day needs to be a short course. But wouldn’t it be fun to see one stage a week that’s just seventy-five or eighty miles? Or a metric century? Imagine the fireworks!
A More Diverse Route: Cobbles, Gravel, and Hill Climbs, Oh My!
Let’s talk about variety. Not every stage needs to be a wild card, but a change of pace now and then can really shake things up—like this summer’s Stage 9. Remember how exciting that was?
For years, Tour organizers have been flirting with the idea of a gravel stage, teasing fans and teams alike. And in 2024, we finally got one. It wasn’t a full gravel stage—more like a cobbled classic—with 199 kilometers of racing and fourteen gravel sectors, most packed into the last hour of the ride. The result? One of the most thrilling Tour stages we’ve seen in years.
With gravel cycling booming, why not add more of it?
And while we’re at it, why not a pavé stage? Sure, you could argue that the stakes in the Tour de France are too high for such an unpredictable and risky challenge. Imagine if Tadej Pogačar or Jonas Vingegaard lost the Tour because of a disastrous day on the cobbles.
But really, couldn’t you make the same argument for a sprint stage?
Cobbled races are iconic in cycling. So why not bring that rugged excitement to the Tour with a pavé stage?
Now, here’s another idea: what if, instead of a second time trial, the race included a hill climb? No domestiques, no team tactics—just a pure, base-to-peak sprint up a mountain. Of course, it would benefit the climbers, but don’t mountain stages already do that? We know what these guys can do as a team, but wouldn’t you love to see how fast Sepp Kuss or Richard Carapaz could fly up Puy de Dôme, solo, with fresh legs and nothing but the mountain to conquer? I know I would.
Bring Back the TTT!
This one needs no explanation. Few things in cycling are more beautiful to watch than a team time trial. The ASO needs to bring these back post haste.
What About this Crazy Business of Riders Only Using One Bike?
If my social media feed is any indicator, everyone with a bike reads Grant Petersen’s recent New Yorker profile. If you haven’t, let me clue you into one fascinating thing the designer behind the beloved Rivendell brand proposed: “I would like to see the Tour de France only allow riders to ride one bike the entire tour,” Petersen said. “Do their own maintenance, change their own flats, the way that normal people have to.”
We can file this one under “Ideas That’ll Never Happen.” But just think about it for a second… Picture Remco Evenepoel, instead of standing beside his bike, screaming for a bike replacement, as he did in the final kilometers of his Olympic-winning road ride, yanking a tube and a CO2 cartridge from his saddle bag and changing a flat just like the rest of us. It would certainly make the race more interesting.
But Do We Need Any of This?
The Tour de France is already a near-perfect sporting spectacle and has been for quite some time. So, why mess with success?
Do we need these suggestions? Probably not. But then again, do we really need the Tour de France? No. Like all bike races, it’s entertainment. And when you have the chance to make entertainment even more thrilling, why wouldn’t you take it?
Well, except for the team time trial. We absolutely need that back.
Related Stories