Tour de France 2025 | Merlier wins after van der Poel's illusion

Pride is a strange thing. It's not always positive; sometimes it gets you into serious trouble. Sometimes it just makes you react, spurring you to surpass your best. Other times it makes you take a breath of fresh air for over 170 kilometers while you pedal in pursuit of a victory that not even the most optimistic parent would tell you is within your reach. Not even if your name is Mathieu van der Poel and you're a professional cycling champion .

For days, Thierry Gouvenou, the technical director of the Tour de France—the guy who designs the routes—has been saying that it's impossible to see the sprinters' stages pedaled entirely in groups, with no one attempting to break away. As a rider, Thierry Gouvenou has had plenty of flat breakaways, but he's never even come close to winning. But as you get older, you forget who you were, the hardships and dreams you once had. And he's started threatening the riders: "I think the sprinters' teams are cutting off the branch they're sitting on, and soon we won't be able to continue offering a spectacle like this," he told Eurosport.

In short: be careful, runners, because if you continue like this, we'll take away the sprint finish stages.

For a team that thrives on speed like Alpecin-Deceuninck, Thierry Gouvenou's words probably seemed offensive. Certainly unfair.

Oh yes, do you want to take away our sprints? Now we'll show you , they must have thought.

And so, just a few kilometers from the start of the ninth stage of the 2025 Tour de France, Chinon-Châteauroux, 174.1 kilometers, Jonas Rickaert and Mathieu van der Poel broke away from the peloton, seeking what was impossible to imagine: to add suspense to a stage with no mountain categorizations and 900 meters of elevation gain. They succeeded.

For at least an hour of the three hours, twenty-eight minutes, and fifty-two seconds the riders pedaled toward Châteauroux ( which they dubbed Cavendish City for the occasion, since Mark Cavendish couldn't resist winning at Châteauroux ), no one in the peloton could have said with absolute certainty that at least one of the two riders in front couldn't have reached the finish line before the peloton. And for the simple fact that when the peloton increased its pace, those in front also increased it, and the minutes of advantage decreased much less than expected. On the other hand, Jonas Rickaert is a rouleur accustomed to pushing for hundreds of kilometers, and he had a good reason to use up every last bit of energy he had today: if Mathieu van der Poel had managed to cross the finish line first today, it would have been a feat . And no exaggeration. Because winning ahead of the sprinters in a sprinters' stage after a 174-kilometer breakaway can only be called a feat.

Between the 164th and 166th kilometers of the ninth stage of the 2025 Tour de France, Jonas Rickaert increased his pedaling speed: after 165 kilometers of breakaway riding at an average speed of fifty miles an hour, gaining four seconds on a group that was racing at full speed to catch up with the breakaway is something extraordinary. It was the last gift he could give his captain. As he moved away, exhausted, his gaze tried to push the Dutchman further. Go, Mathieu, go, I have faith in you .

After completing a 165-kilometer time trial, Mathieu van der Poel began a six-kilometer prologue. The former world champion stretched out on his bike, pedaled as hard as he could, and was swallowed up by the peloton with seven hundred meters to go.

The sprint had already begun, still without a leader, as seems to be the norm at this Grande Boucle. Jonathan Milan took the lead without the right speed, Tim Merlier rejoined, joined him, and overtook him a few meters before the finish .

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