Tadej Pogacar, the leader of the Tour.
Photo: EFE – MARTIN DIVISEK
Summary and Fast Informame
Listen to this article
Audio generated with Google
Stage 16 of the Tour de France 2025 promises to be a decisive and symbolic chapter in the struggle for the yellow jersey.
On Tuesday, after the rest day, the squad will leave from Montpellier to travel 171 kilometers to the ramps of the feared Mont Ventoux, where the legend, the wind and the past converge in an hour of pure agony.
Tadej Pogacar, leader of the general with more than four minutes on Jonas Vingegaard, arrives with a solid advantage, but also with old wounds open in this lunar mountain that made him staggered in 2021.
The promotion to Ventoux, with its 15.7 kilometers at 8.7% and its final part exposed to the wind and the gravel, demands more than legs. It demands memory, character and courage. The atmosphere is unique: “No one opens their mouths at the exit,” said Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour. And it's not for less. This top has seen deepening, tragedies and unforgettable scenes, such as Froome running without a bicycle in 2016. Pogacar will now try to rewrite its history, close wounds and affirm as the absolute pattern of the Tour 2025.
After his demonstration in Hautacam, where he took Vingegaard more than two minutes, the Slovenian seems to have left several of the traumas of past editions behind. However, he does not forget that it was in Ventoux where the Danish began to build his myth. Therefore, this stage will not be only a physical battle, but an emotional duel between the dominant present and the ghosts of the past. The tour enters its most mythical phase, and Pogacar wants to get out of it as a champion without pending accounts.
The stage can be seen in Caracol HD2 and Ditu from 6:30 am and from 8:30 in the morning in the basic signal.
🚴🏻⚽🏀 The latest in sports?: Everything you should know about world sport is in the spectator
