Tour de France 2025 Stage 6

July 10, 2025 Today is the hardest road stage of any in the first nine days of racing with barely a meter of flat road the entire day. The race starts in Bayeux, home of the Bayeux Tapestry which is a 900 year old scrolling piece of art that depicts the Norman Conquest of 1066. After 22KM of racing, the sprinters will have a chance to contest the intermediate sprint in Villers-Bocage before the climbing begins. The first categorized climb is the Côte du Mont-Pinçon (5.6KM at 3.8%) with 165KM to go. Next comes the Côte de la Rançonnière (2.3KM at 7.5%) with 148KM to go. The proceeding 82KM is constantly rolling but there are no categorized climbs. The finale kicks off with 65KM to go with the Côte du Mortain (1.6KM at 8.6%), the Côte de Juvigney-le-Tertre (2.2KM at 6.6%) and the Côte Saint-Michel-de-Montjoie (3.7KM at 4.2%). A 15KM gradual downhill takes the riders to the finish town of Vire for the start of the final categorized climb of the Côte de Vaudry (1.2KM at 7%). The top is 5KM from the finish but the difficulties are not done yet. There is a fast downhill before the final kilometer to the line in Vire which averages 10%. In all, there is 3,500M of elevation over the 202KM route which present another prime opportunity for the puncheurs or the break. After the flag dropped, Intermarché-Wanty immediately went to the front of the peloton to control with their interest laying up the road for the intermediate sprint with Biniam Girmay. 1KM from the sprint, Alpecin-Deceuninck and Lidl-Trek both came up to position themselves for Mathieu van der Poel and Jonathan Milan respectively. Girmay started his sprint first but Milan took the maximum points by over five bike lengths to van der Poel then Girmay. Attacks went directly after the sprint with Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek and Ben Healy of EF-Education EasyPost. Harold Tejada of XDS-Astana and Victor Campenaerts of Visma-Lease a Bike bridged up but as Simmons led over the Côte du Mont-Pinçon, the peloton had caught the group and the race was reset. Wout van Aert of Visma-Lease a Bike was next to get a gap with Pablo Castrillo of Movistar following behind. The pair rode together for 15KM but the peloton was relentlessly attacking and brought the group back at the base of Côte de la Rançonnière with 148KM to go. Numerous attempts were made to break the elastic but even on the steeper, upper slopes, the front of the race was still together but the peloton was trimmed to around 35 riders. The road continued to rise over the top and Healy hit the front and was finally able to break clear with a group containing Tejada and Simmons again as well as van der Poel and Will Barta of Movistar. Picnic-PostNL, Uno-X Mobility, and Visma-Lease a Bike all wanted to be in the break and continued attacking. An impressive solo effort by Eddie Dunbar of Jayco AlUla saw him bridge 15 seconds to make it to the front. Simon Yates of Visma-Lease a Bike put in a full effort as and went across with Michael Storer of Tudor Pro Cycling. The bunch was not content with the constituents of the group and the attacking continued. It wasn't until the race went through Flers that the bunch finally settled down and UAE-XRG was able to set a controlling pace. The gap stabilized at around 90 seconds which was the deficit of van der Poel to the Yellow Jersey at the start of the day. Nils Politt of UAE-XRG did all of the pace setting in the peloton and, without help, the gap slowly expanded to 3 minutes by the time the break got to Côte du Mortain with 65KM to go. The break rode hard and stayed together up the climb as Dunbar crested first, 2 minutes 45 seconds ahead of the peloton with thousands of people on each side of the road. The pattern of the race continued as Storer led over the Côte de Juvigney-le-Tertre with the gap increasing up to 3 minutes 40 seconds with 46KM to go. Healy broke the accord with 42KM to go by attacking the break on a flat, narrow piece of road outside of Le Mesnil-Adelée. He quickly got a gap and within 5KM, Healy had 40 seconds. The gap back to the peloton also blew out to 5 minutes by the start of the Côte Saint-Michel-de-Montjoie with 31KM to go. When the gap got out to 50 seconds, the cohesion in the chase broke down and Simmons flew off, joined by Storer, in pursuit of the Irishman. Healy looked powerful over the top of the Côte Saint-Michel-de-Montjoie and held a 55 second lead over Simmons and Storer. Try as they might, Simmons and Storer only lost time as Healy kicked and pushed the pedals around. He flew over the Côte de Vaudry, descended into Vire, and climbed the final kilometer to the line to take the first Tour de France stage win in his career after an audacious long range attack. We had to wait 2 minutes 44 seconds for Simmons to cross the line in second after he beat Storer in the sprint. The peloton was mostly together going into the final kilometer but Visma-Lease a Bike were piling on the pressure from the bottom. The top GC riders all finished together, 5 minutes 27 seconds down. Van der Poel did just enough in the break to haul back his deficit from yesterday's time trial to take the Yellow Jersey again by a single second from Tadej Pogačar.