It wasn't a quiet day. Jonathan Milan won stage 17 of the Tour de France.

Those hot, sleepy July afternoons, when your eyes would close and your imagination would wander elsewhere, are gone. The Tour de France could sometimes transform into a serial novel, a playbook with identical plots, escapes destined to be resumed at the right moment, and a rapidly increasing pace when the kilometers to the finish line become few and far between. All this had a particular charm. And it didn't matter if the pathos was close to zero and the excitement almost nonexistent. It's always comforting to have the illusion of knowing how something will end, to be prepared for events.

It's all gone. And when it reappears, as in Dunkirk , there's always someone who resents it, who threatens to remove even the little bit of this past that remains. A brazen and all-encompassing removal.

The seventeenth stage of the 2025 Tour de France could, should, have been a quiet day . It could, should, have been one of those warm, sleepy afternoons. And it started as it should. A bit of a scramble, a few failed breakaway attempts, then Jonas Abrahamsen, Vincenzo Albanese, Mathieu Burgaudeau, and Quentin Pacher were left alone to blaze the trail to Valence.

A small climb was enough , because the Col du Pertuis (3.5 kilometers at an average gradient of 5.1 percent) for the riders, to transform our expectations into a midsummer delusion . There were sprinters to be beaten out of the first group, and those without a sprinter on their team did everything they could to drop them. Ineos Grenadier and Movistar raised the pace beyond what most could tolerate, and at the head of the group, many tried to get chased. Quinn Simmons, teammate of Jonathan Milan, the sprinter leading the points classification, chased everyone. The American's message was clear: do whatever you want, I'll come and get you, then I won . Quinn Simmons has been riding incredibly well since the beginning of the Tour, and his message was a very credible threat.

The sprinters who had fallen behind spent many kilometers catching up with the last remaining members of the peloton. They returned in time to avoid problems on the final climb of the day, just to see Wout van Aert sprint ahead in pursuit of a feat as romantic as it was improbable .

The same attempted by Jonas Abrahamsen pedaling in his own way of fury and inability to give up .

Only in the last few kilometers did what was supposed to be happen.

Only in the final kilometers did the plot of the seventeenth stage of the 2025 Tour de France return to normal. It was supposed to be a sprint, and it was a sprint it was. It was a small group, not a peloton, because between the rain and the rush of a lack of opportunities, many, too many, ended up sprawled on the wet asphalt of Valence . Of those left standing , Jonathan Milan was the quickest, the fastest to take the lead, the most tenacious in holding it to the finish line. He preceded Jordi Meeus and Tobias Lund Andresen.

For the Italian sprinter, this is the second stage victory in this Grande Boucle . Above all, it gives him the chance to continue hoping to wear the green jersey all the way to Paris, on the podium.

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