Mont Ventoux summit finish likely for 2025 Tour de France after four-year absence

One of cycling's best-loved ascents, the daunting Mont Ventoux, could well be back on the Tour de France route in 2025 after a four-year absence, with a summit finish rumoured for the 'Giant of Provence' for the first time in the race since 2016.

According to regional newspaper La Marseillaise, a summit finish on the Ventoux is "expected" in 2025. The media outlet also cites local département president Dominique Santoni as saying that "there was a very strong possibility that the Tour de France comes here next year," although Santoni did not say exactly where he means by 'here'.

The Ventoux last appeared in the Tour de France back in 2021, when a spectacular double ascent culminated in Wout van Aert claiming a solo victory in the nearby town of Malaucène. 

The 2021 Tour de France Ventoux stage was also where the Jonas Vingegaard-Tadej Pogačar rivalry first reached a high point, as Vingegaard briefly dropped the Slovenian near the summit of the monster climb.

Pogačar went on to win overall, but Visma-Lease a Bike later said his difficulties that day on the Ventoux became the starting point for their development of a strategy to defeat the UAE Team Emirates racer in the 2022 Tour and again in 2023.

Rather than 'just' crossing the top of the Ventoux like in 2021, the Tour de France last had a summit finish on the mountain in its 2016 edition, when a wind-blighted ascent forced the organisers to end the stage at the Chalet-Reynard restaurant, roughly three quarters of the way up the climb. 

Victory that day went to the recently retired breakaway specialist Thomas de Gendt (Lotto-Dstny), but it is mainly remembered for Chris Froome's desperate run up the last part of the climb after he came off worse in a crash involving an in-race TV motorbike.

As was only to be expected given its name, the Ventoux formed the main attraction of the CIC-Mont Ventoux Denivélé, the now-suspended one-day race, both in 2022 and 2023. However, it has not formed part of the Tour.

Should the 'Giant of Provence' finally feature on the 2025 Tour de France route, there are rumours it would tackled sometime in the second week. Next year's Tour has a confirmed Grand Depart in Lille in northern France on July 5.

Other, unconfirmed rumours Tweeted by cycling writer ammattipyöräily, suggest that a return to La Plagne in the Alps, last visited in 1995 by the Tour de France, is also possible a decade on in the race.

La Plagne was where Miguel Indurain all but sealed the deal on his fifth Tour de France win as he shed all his rivals with a remorseless pursuit of fellow contender Alex Zülle. 

Eight years earlier, the ski station in the eastern part of the Alps was where Stephen Roche staged one of cycling's most famous comebacks in a duel against Pedro Delgado, prior to going on to win the Tour outright.

A visit to Brittany?

At the moment, nothing has been officialised about the 2025 Tour de France route barring the opening three days in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais northerly region, a stage 4 start in Amiens and - after this year's finish in Nice - a final run-in to Paris on July 29.

The 2025 Tour starts on Saturday July 5 in Lille with a sprinters stage, then immediately switches to a much hillier format for a long trek to the northern coast on Sunday July 6, finishing in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Stage 3 - on Monday July 7 - should be another bunch sprint, finishing in nearby Dunkirk. The Tour finally leaves the region via a start in the westerly city of Amiens on Tuesday July 8.

According to velowire the website which specialises in predicting the route of the upcoming Tour de France in as much detail as possible, the route will likely continue to head west through Normandy and Brittany. The latter would be partly in homage to another five-times Tour de France winner and Brittany's most famous racer: Bernard Hinault, whose 40th and final Tour victory took place in 1985.

Stages in central France could then follow, with the first week 'extended' to July 14 and a finish on the Mont Dore near Clermont-Ferrand on stage 10. A transfer south to Toulouse on the first rest day on the Tuesday of week 2 could precede at least a couple of days in the Pyrenees, possibly featuring a mountain time trial and prior to the speculated ascent of the Ventoux.

Week 3 then takes the Tour into the Alps, about which very little is yet known, Velowire speculates this could be due to the densely packed cycling calendar this year, delaying organisers' ability to finalize their plans. The website also suggests that a global drop in the number of sprint stages compared to 2023 could well be on the cards as well.