Archive July 4, 2025

The 112th edition of the Tour de France gets under way in Lille on Saturday with the three-week race ending on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Sunday, 27 July.

The riders will tackle six mountain stages including trips to the Pyrenees and Alps during the gruelling 3,320km (2,063-mile) race.

There will also be two individual time trials, with the second featuring the steep climb up to the Altiport in Peyragudes.

BBC Sport looks at all 21 stages of La Grande Boucle analysing where it could be won and lost.

The Grand Depart takes place in France or the first time since 2021 with a relatively flat route around Lille served up for starters.

That should mean the sprinters will get an early opportunity to take centre stage on the final straight below the Citadel.

The second stage is also the longest in this year’s race covering 209.1km with the peloton making their way through the countryside of the Hauts-de-France region, heading towards the Strait of Dover.

This should be another good chance for the Tour’s fast men to shine.

Both Amiens and Rouen have been the preserve of sprinters in previous editions of the Tour but that will not be the case this time around.

The first of two individual time trials arrives on wide and completely flat roads of Caen.

Six categorised climbs and more than 3,400m of vertical gain mean this is regarded as the most challenging flat stage in the Tour’s recent history.

The race passes through the home village of five-time winner Bernard Hinault during a relatively tame opening 175km of stage seven.

However, expect bedlam as the finishing line approaches with a closing circuit that mirrors the 2021 stage.

When you think of Chateauroux one rider immediately springs to mind – Mark Cavendish.

The first of the Manx Missile’s record 35 stage wins arrived in the city in 2008 and he repeated that success on the Avenue de la Chatre in 2011 and 2021.

While the 4,400m of elevation gain across seven category-two climbs and a category-three ascent is likely to put the sprinters in trouble almost from the start, the general classification contenders are likely to keep their powder dry on a stage that looks made for the breakaway specialists.

There will likely be a strong posse of home riders trying to get in any group heading up the road with the objective of becoming the first French stage winner on Bastille Day since Warren Barguil in 2017.

The first real big day in the mountains could see fireworks in the GC race.

The route up to the ski resort at Hautacam on the roads above Lourdes takes the peloton on the route where five-time champion Miguel Indurain tore the race (and his rivals) apart in 1994.

An individual time trial takes the riders from the valley floor up to the runway of Altiport 007 in Peyragudes.

After a flat start, there will be over 8km uphill and no hiding place for the GC favourites in the race of truth.

A classic and mouth-watering mountain stage in the Pyrenees arrives at the end of week two.

Nearly 5,000m of elevation gain is packed into climbs up the mighty hors-categorie Tourmalet followed by the Col d’Aspin and Col de Peyresourde.

On a day when the GC riders will be need to be at their very best, the strongest climbers will have their focus on the fight for the King of the Mountains jersey and hope to contest the stage on the pull up to the ski resort of Luchon-Superbagneres.

A transitional stage arrives as the race heads from the Pyrenees towards the Alps, which looks suited to the strongman sprinters who can cope with some climbing.

Stage 16 is a flat route until one of the most legendary mountains in Tour history comes into view at the end with the potential to turn the race on its head.

With no categorised climbs all day before Mont Ventoux, and the intermediate sprint featuring 112km into the stage, it would be no surprise if the peloton remains largely intact until then.

With two big Alpine tests still to come the GC teams will probably play second fiddle to the sprint teams when it comes to trying to rein in any breakaways.

This year’s queen stage comes with more than 5,500m of elevation across 171.5km of racing and three legendary climbs which makes it arguably the toughest run of the entire Tour.

All three ascents fall under the hors categorie, with the Col du Glandon, a 21.7km drag with with sections at double digits just for starters.

The last real mountain stage represents the final opportunity for those high in the GC standings to make a play for the yellow jersey.

The route from Albertville to La Plagne covers almost 130km, and includes five leg-sapping ascents.

Plenty of points will be up for grabs again in the race for the the polka-dot jersey points available but this is really a last-chance saloon in terms of the overall race.

The penultimate stage sees the race snake over the hills of the Jura towards Pontarlier.

The Tour returns to it’s traditional Paris finish after relocating to Nice last year due to the Olympics.

However, it does so with a twist, given the cobbled climb up to the Sacre-Cœur Basilica features three times in a throwback to the road race in the 2024 Paris Games.

With 16 players and head coach Andy Farrell on British and Irish Lions duty, Ireland’s squad for this month’s two Tests against Georgia and Portugal was always going to be almost unrecognisable.

Even before his playing career came to an end almost 10 years ago, Paul O’Connell felt like an Irish head coach in waiting. The absence of Farrell for this trip gives him his first opportunity to lead the side he represented on 108 occasions.

Such is the youthful nature of his summer squad, centre Stuart McCloskey is the only player on the trip who played with or against the Munster legend.

Ireland arrived in Georgia on Wednesday with 13 uncapped players in their number after Ulster prop Scott Wilson was added to the squad just before departure.

Wing Tommy O’Brien and second row Darragh Murray will make their debuts against Georgia, while the uncapped Michael Milne, Jack Aungier, Tom Ahern and Ben Murphy are all on the bench.

Farrell has previously spoken cautiously about the idea of simply handing out international caps although this tour has a different feel with interim attack coach Mike Prendergast saying last week it “would be the intention” to have all of the tourists get game-time across the two Tests.

The 2025 Six Nations brought the curtain down on the long and distinguished Test careers of Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Cian Healy.

The trio have been a mainstay of the international panel for over a decade and earned a combined 376 caps in green. Indeed, nobody in history played more for Ireland than Healy.

Their retirements, which in the case of Murray is solely from the international game, offer up opportunities for others to crack what has been a relatively settled matchday squad.

Leinster’s Jack Boyle had already been putting pressure on Healy after the 23-year-old made his debut against Wales in the Six Nations, and will be in pole position, but Munster’s Michael Milne and Paddy McCarthy, who is the younger brother of British and Irish Lions lock Joe McCarthy, will also be keen to grab their opportunities to impress.

Coupled with the form of Jamison Gibson-Park, Munster’s Craig Casey, who missed the Six Nations through injury, had already largely edged ahead of Murray for both province and the Test side.

The 26-year-old will step up to captain Ireland for the first time on this tour but will be backed up by the uncapped pair of Ben Murphy and Nathan Doak, with the former named on the bench against Georgia.

With usual skipper Caelan Doris injured, and Jack Conan and Josh van der Flier away with the Lions, plenty of back rows figure to be handed the chance to stake a claim to step up in O’Mahony’s absence.

From the moment Leinster’s Sam Prendegast was named to start against Australia in November, the 22-year-old has been at the centre of the fiercest debate in Irish rugby.

When Johnny Sexton retired after the 2023 World Cup, it was Munster’s Jack Crowley who was given first crack at establishing himself as the former world player of the year’s long-term successor.

Crowley largely impressed as Ireland won the Six Nations Grand Slam in 2024 but, by the end of the calendar year, had appeared to cede the jersey to the young challenger.

Leinster’s Prendergast started the first four games of the 2025 Six Nations, although the more experienced player got the nod for the concluding game against Italy in Rome.

Ireland have not had such a back and forth for their fly-half berth since Sexton began to challenge Ronan O’Gara almost 15 years ago and every selection is scrutinised by the public, a situation only heightened by provincial rivalries.

With Ireland having drawn from largely the same pool for the past number of years for their matchday squads, it is natural that plenty of attention will be devoted to those with little or no international experience on this trip.

There are a few others, though, who are looking to offer a reminder of what they can do at this level. Chief among them, the squad’s most capped player – Jacob Stockdale.

It was during a Lions tour, when the invitational side was in New Zealand eight years ago, that Ulster wing Stockdale made a try-scoring international debut against the United States.

His first 18 months as an international included setting a record for tries in a single Six Nations campaign, since bettered by France’s Louis Bielle-Biarrey only this year, and an unforgettable score to clinch Ireland’s first win on home soil against the All Blacks.

Injuries, some questions over his defence, and the qualification on residency of Leinster’s James Lowe, have ensured the 29-year-old has been a more peripheral figure in recent times, making only three international appearances in the past four years.

Healy is not the only experienced front row campaigner to be absent this summer.

With the 37-year-old retired, and Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Ronan Kelleher, Tadhg Furlong and Finlay Bealham all with the Lions, Ireland will be without their first and second-choice units from recent seasons.

As a result, Saturday’s Test against a muscular Georgian side will provide a thorough examination of Ireland’s depth in a position recently considered so stretched that performance director David Humphreys placed a temporary ban on imported front row signings.

The emergence of Leinster trio Boyle, Gus McCarthy and Tom Clarkson during the 2024-25 season has eased those fears somewhat and it is those three who start together on Saturday.

Against a Georgian side historically renowned for their scrummaging prowess, and coached by former England hooker Richard Cockerill, the inexperienced visiting group will face a serious test of their mettle.

As the second-lowest ranked team at Euro 2025, not many people would give Poland much of a hope at this summer’s tournament.

But that would not take into account their star striker, Ewa Pajor.

After a record-breaking debut season with Barcelona, the 28-year-old goes into the competition as the most prolific striker in the world.

It has not been a straightforward journey for the Pole, who has overcome a career-threatening eye disease on the way, and while she has been rewarded with trophies at club level, it is her achievements with the national team which mean the most.

“Representing your country and leading it to its first major tournament is something you carry in your heart forever,” Pajor told BBC Sport.

Despite being drawn in a daunting group which contains eight-time Euros winners Germany, 2021 Olympic silver medallists Sweden and 2017 Euros runners-up Denmark, Pajor says Poland can make their mark.

She grew up on a farm outside Uniejow, a spa town of fewer than 2,000 people in central Poland.

If she wasn’t helping with the cows, she played football with her brothers – she was one of five siblings – as well as the local boys, outscoring them as if she were her idol Cristiano Ronaldo.

After she was spotted playing with local team Orleta Wielenin – she was the only girl playing – Pajor’s primary school PE teacher started to take her to tournaments in the town of Konin as her parents could not take time off from the farm.

Soon Pajor joined the youth system of women’s club Medyk Konin and she and older sister Paulina moved into a dormitory an hour from home.

Homesickness hit Pajor hard, but her parents had brought up a tough child.

“My ambition comes from my parents,” she told DAZN. “From a young age I saw how hard-working and ambitious they are. They instilled that in me, as well as never giving up. “

It was at Medyk that Pajor first met Nina Patalon, now Poland’s head coach, who at the time was coaching in the club’s youth set-up.

Patalon – the first woman in Poland to receive a Uefa Pro Diploma – has coached thousands of girls and women over the years, but she still remembers the moment she first saw a 10-year-old Pajor.

“Ewa came to one of my sessions with girls two years older than her, this tiny girl with a ball almost bigger than her,” Patalon told BBC Sport.

“At first, I thought she was way too small for the group. But then she started playing, and we were all stunned.

“Her speed, coordination, the way she moved with the ball – it was simply extraordinary. The older girls couldn’t handle her.

Pajor made her senior debut for Medyk – coached by Patalon – at 15 years and 133 days, scoring twice as she become the youngest player to appear in Poland’s top flight.

She went on to score 64 goals in 60 league games for the club before joining German giants Wolfsburg in 2015.

Moving to a club that was a fixture in the Champions League, and playing in a physical domestic league, was a huge step up for Pajor – she told DAZN that she was “very thin with no muscles” at the time.

It was in 2017 in Germany that Pajor was diagnosed with keratoconus, a degenerative eye disease that can cause blurriness and stop the eye from focusing properly.

The issue threatened her career, but two surgeries and adaptive contact lenses allowed her to continue her development.

After making modest contributions to Wolfsburg’s Frauen-Bundesliga title wins in 2016-17 and 2017-18, Pajor scored 24 goals in 19 games in 2018-19 as her side won a third successive title.

Pajor followed that up with 17 goals in 16 games as Wolfsburg again won the title in 2019-20, before injury disrupted the following two campaigns.

Nine goals in the 2022-23 Women’s Champions League took Wolfsburg to the final, during which she scored the opener.

Yet for the fourth time in her career Pajor was on the losing side as Wolfsburg surrendered a 2-0 lead to lose 3-2 to Barcelona in Eindhoven.

The quality and standards at Barcelona are such that it often takes new signings months to find their feet, but that was no issue for Pajor.

Not only did Pajor win the Pichichi Trophy as the top scorer in Liga F last season, but at the time of writing she is the top-scoring player – female or male – in the world in 2025 with 29 goals.

Though Barcelona lost to Arsenal in the Champions League final – bringing her tally of defeats in Europe’s premier club tournament’s showpiece to five – she undoubtedly improved a team that was already close to perfection.

“Barca and Pajor have improved each other. Her arrival gave Barca a number nine, a killer,” Spanish football journalist Julia Gimenez Funes told BBC Sport.

“After Asisat Oshoala’s departure last year, Salma Paralluelo filled that position and did very well even though it wasn’t her natural position.

“However, Barca needed a pure centre-forward like Pajor who could take advantage of passes from Patri Guijarro, Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmati. “

Speaking before the Champions League final in May, Barca boss Pere Romeu said that “having Ewa Pajor in the box gives us more presence than we had before”.

Barcelona have not only taught Pajor a new way to play football – she drops deeper and gets more involved in build-up play than she did at Wolfsburg – but other aspects of the game as well.

“What surprised me most was the focus on team culture and details,” Pajor told BBC Sport.

“It’s not just talent – it’s discipline, humility, and the will to improve constantly.

As Poland’s all-time leading goal scorer with – at the time of writing – 68 goals in 101 appearances, it was fitting Pajor scored the most significant goal in the history of Polish women’s football.

Hanging on to a 1-0 aggregate lead against Austria in the second leg of their Euro 2025 qualification play-off in Vienna, Pajor smashed home from close range in the fourth minute of stoppage time to secure victory.

Pajor broke down in tears at the final whistle, Poland’s place at a major tournament for the very first time secured on her 28th birthday.

“It was one of the most emotional moments of my life,” Pajor told BBC Sport.

“Knowing we had made history – it’s hard to describe. I’ve won titles at club level, but this was different.

“It’s not just about me – it’s about the team, the journey, and every little girl watching who now knows this is possible. “

Though Poland lost all of their Euros qualifiers – they earned a place in the play-offs by winning their group in the 2023-24 Uefa Women’s Nations League – Pajor is bullish on their chances.

“We’ve grown so much as a group, and I believe in the work we’ve done,” she said.