Tour de France 2025 Stage 11

July 16, 2025 The Pyrenees are in the distance but the mountains will have wait for another day. The route on today's stage circumnavigates the Pink city of Toulouse on a clockwise loop. For the first 110KM of the 158KM stage, there is just one category four climb in between long distances of flat and gently rolling road. The first point of interest is the intermediate sprint in Labastide-Beauvoir with 61KM to go. The final third of the stage however is quite lumpy. The route zig-zags around the East bank of the Garrone river to find seven climbs, all of which are between 800 and 1600M in length, as it guides the riders back into Toulouse for the finish in front of the city gardens in the Compans-Caffarelli district. The last climb comes 8.5KM from the finish and would be an ideal launch pad for an attack if the race winning move did not already go by this point. After a neutral zone of over 16KM, the race finally got underway. Mauro Schmid of Jayco AlUla, Jonas Abrahamsen of Uno-X Mobility, and Davide Ballerini of XDS-Astana got away right from the start but attacking continued behind. No one could get away on the flat road but a new group of ten split off the front of the peloton on the Côte de Castelnau d'Estrétefonds after 26KM of racing. The remaining peloton also split in half and race leader, Ben Healy of EF-Education EasyPost, was caught out of position and forced to chase from the second half. With the exception of the three leaders, the race was all back together at 123KM to go. More groups split and came back which kept the speed over 50KM/HR through 90KM to go. The gap to Schmid, Abrahamsen, and Ballerini had gotten as high as 1 minute but was down to just 20 seconds with the intermediate sprint approaching fast. The leaders finally got some company with 83KM to go as Fred Wright of Bahrain Victorious and Mathieu Burgaudeau of TotalEnergies bridged up. Pace in the bunch went out completely and the gap grew quickly to over 1 minute. When the gap got to 1 minute 45 seconds, Groupama-FDJ sent two riders on the attack which spurred on the others to follow. The race was in pieces all over the road and was impossible to control. With 68KM to go, Healy followed a wheel and found himself coming across to a chase group with Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike following. Panic hit for Soudal Quickstep and UAE-XRG. The situation was quickly resolved however but many others were missing, including nearly all of Ineos, Primož Roglič of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, and Matteo Jorgenson of Visma-Lease a Bike. A group of five got away from the maelstrom of the peloton with 64KM to go which included Wout van Aert of Visma-Lease a Bike, Axel Laurance of Ineos, Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek, Mathieu van der Poel of Alpecin-Deceuninck, and Arnaud De Lie of Lotto. They started to get a decent gap and the peloton finally took a breath which allowed the likes of Roglič, Jorgenson, and others to make their way back into the bunch. Abrahamsen took the sprint in the front group from Ballerini at 60KM to go. The chase group came through 50 seconds later with a much calmer peloton at 2 minutes 20 seconds. The lead group started the first of the climbs, the Côte de Montgiscard, with 46.5KM to go and 30 seconds on the chase group. A few climbs came and went but the chase group was stuck at 25 seconds. Van Aert made an acceleration on the third to last climb but could not shake anyone out. Both groups were riding full but they were equally matched. When the front group hit the penultimate climb of the Côte de Vielle-Toulouse with 15.5KM to go, the cohesion was still strong. Simmons realized the chase was not going to catch the leaders so he sent an all-in attack on the climb to bridge up. He got within 10 seconds but Abrahamsen attacked from the front with Schmid and they were able to hold their advantage over the top. Schmid led Abrahamsen into the final ramp of the Côte de Pech David with 9.5KM to go. The bottom was incredibly steep at well over 15%. The two leaders charged up the hill with thousands of cheering fans waving their flags and peering around each other to get a glimpse of their heroes. They went over the top together but behind, van der Poel was on the move and overtook Simmons and the other riders from the first group and was sitting in third in the road, 25 seconds back with 8.5KM to go. Schmid and Abrahamsen worked well together through the streets of Toulouse but van der Poel was flying and had the pair within 10 seconds at 2KM to go. Schmid was leading with 800M to go and they slowed a bit to prepare for the sprint. Abrahamsen played it cool, sitting behind Schmid with 400M to go as van der Poel was just 3 seconds behind. Abrahamsen opened his sprint at 225M and pulled alongside Schmid and they were even with 50M to go. Abrahamsen had just a bit more speed though and took the win by the diameter of a wheel, giving Uno-X Mobility their first ever Tour de France stage win. Abrahamsen's performance was remarkable, especially given that he broke his collarbone in the Baloise Belgium Tour exactly 1 month ago. Van der Poel took third place at 7 seconds and De Lie led the chase group in for fourth, 53 seconds down. In the GC group, EF-Education EasyPost took control and led the peloton into the final climb around 3 minutes 30 seconds behind the front of the race. Kévin Vauquelin of Arkéa-B&B Hotels attacked from the bottom but was reeled back in by Matteo Jorgenson of Visma-Lease a Bike. The acceleration cut the group down to 15 riders at the top. Jonas Vingegaard made an attack right at the top but it was immediately covered by Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quickstep and Tadej Pogačar of UAE-XRG. At the bottom, no one had numbers to control and attacks started flying. In a heart-stopping moment, Pogačar got his front wheel on the wrong side of Uno-X Mobility's Tobias Johannessen's rear wheel as he was moving right and Pogačar went down. He got up quickly but his chain was off and it took time to get it back on. By the time he was rolling again, he was 25 seconds behind but crucially had Adam Yates and Jhonatan Narváez to form a chase. The favorites group slowed down, either for sporting etiquette or just from the racing situation, but either way, Pogačar was able to get back to the group and stay level on time. The group called a truce and they rolled across the line all together with no time gaps.