Updated October 24, 2025 04:23AM
What were the 5 best moments of the 2025 pro cycling road season?
A smash-mouth slugfest into San Remo, a wild grand tour coup, and a rogue outsider stealing rainbows all feature in our list.
With the men’s and women’s pro road seasons in the books, it’s time to hit rewind and recap the best bits of a year that saw Tadej Pogačar run riot, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot prove timeless, and pro cycling write history in Rwanda.
But road racing isn’t all unicorns and fairy dust – there were bad parts too.
So here we have our 5 best and 2 worst moments of the 2025 pro cycling season:
Pogačar vs. Van der Poel vs. Ganna in smash-mouth San Remo
The final 40km of Milan-San Remo was smash-mouth racing. (Photo: Luca Bettini – Pool/Getty Images)
If you ever get bored of watching Watopia while you’re suffering through your indoor trainer intervals, tune in to the final hour of Milan-San Remo instead.
The slugfest between Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, and Filippo Ganna over the Cipressa and Poggio was 30km of punk rock racing fit for a Mad Max movie.
Pogi attacked so many times we lost count. MVDP pulled some of his finest trademark pain-faces and clung to the wheel. Ganna transcended his barn door brawn and clung on over the climbs.
This was one of the rare times this season where Pogačar wasn’t guaranteed victory, and one that saw three of the rock stars of pro cycling lock in to some good ol’ bloody-minded suffering.
With a thrilling sprint to cap it all off, it was a finale that made the five hours of “nothing” that came before well worth sitting through.
This was one of the best editions of La Classicissima in years, and possibly the single best day of men’s racing of 2025.
Ferrand-Prévot beats back sickness, bounces out of crash, crushes Paris-Roubaix
Ferrand-Prévot didn’t hang around in her Paris-Roubaix debut. (Photo: Billy Ceusters/Getty Images)
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot already won almost everything possible in pro cycling, but nobody – not even PFP herself – was expecting her to win her debut Paris-Roubaix.
But the 33-year-old did just that, and she did it in sensational fashion.
Ferrand-Prévot shrugged off a pre-race infection. She chased back from a crash ahead of the crux Mons-en-Pévèle cobblestone sector. She launched a “f*ck around and find out” attack 18km out that went all the way to the Velodrome.
Like all editions of Paris Roubaix Femmes, this was a pulsating, corn-popping watch.
But it was one flavored with so much delicious buttery context.
PFP only returned to the road this winter after a long hiatus, and failed to convince anyone her dream to win the Tour de France was possible with an iffy first race back in the UAE.
Then, after finding her form in the spring classics, she decided at the final hour to add Roubaix to the program. A Roubaix cobblestone and a yellow jersey followed.
That’s some way to make a heaven out of “Hell.”
Yates and Van Aert snatch Giro d’Italia victory from feuding rivals
Stage 20 of the Giro d’Italia saw a tactical masterpiece and a racing meltdown. (Photo: LUCA BETTINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Did Simon Yates win the Giro d’Italia or did Isaac del Toro lose it? It’s one of the debates that will rage through Reddit threads and pub chats for years to come.
And it’s an argument made possible by a jaw-dropping day of strategic masterpieces and racing meltdowns.
Heading into stage 20, Visma-Lease a Bike needed something special to overturn Adam Yates’ 1:21 GC deficit. The infernal climb of the Colle dell Finestre – the same climb Chris Froome used to pull a stunning coup in 2018 – was the perfect place to make it happen.
The Killer Bees hatched a tactical plan that’s as old as Eddy Merckx, and pulled it off.
Wout van Aert made the early break. Yates attacked Del Toro and Richard Carapaz on the steeps of the Finestre gravel, and they linked up at the top.
It was so simple, but it was sport directing perfection.
However meanwhile, the stage descended into “watch through your fingers” TV as Del Toro and Carapaz bickered their way out of a pink jersey. Every second they refused to work together proved to Yates’ and Van Aert’s advantage.
The GC gaps swung by 5 minutes in the course of 50km, and the pink jersey traded shoulders within sight of the final podium in Rome.
A breakaway victory, a Pogačar spill, and the Tour de France stage that had it all
Abrahamsen’s victory was only one talking point from a thunderous stage of the Tour de France. (Photo: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Stage 11 of the Tour de France was a brain-frying sensory overload.
So much happened in this three-and-a-quarter-hour thrill ride through Toulouse that only time in a darkened room would allow the brain to compute it all.
Fan favorite and stage winner Jonas Abrahamsen joined Mauro Schmid in the group that attacked from the flag drop, and they wouldn’t be separated until they – and a rogue protestor – sprinted for the finish line 157km later.
Behind, Tadej Pogačar crashed, the GC group sat up, and the incident-provoking Tobias Halland Johanssen was later hounded by online threats.
And as if all there weren’t already enough talking points, Mathieu van der Poel spent much of the stage thinking he was off the front, and Abrahamsen shouldn’t even have been at the Tour after he broke his collarbone in mid-June.
This was the stage that had it all.
There was jeopardy, intrigue, and action at both the front and the back, for almost every kilometer.
Days like these don’t come around often at the Tour de France, but treasure them when they do. They make the 200km “breakaway and a sprint” stages worth sitting [or snoozing] through.
Vallieres rips up the pre-race previews to become world champion
Nobody was betting on Vallieres before road worlds except for the rider herself. CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP via Getty Images)
Magdeleine Vallieres bet on herself at the Rwanda road world championships, and she came out of it in rainbows.
The Canadian super-outsider self-funded her trip to Kigali, gambled on going for the early break, and balanced brains and brawn to double her one-victory palmarès in serious style at the 2025 road worlds.
But Vallieres’ shock win was only the exclamation point at the end of a race of pure thrills.
The savage course caused huge attrition. The favorites caught “Group 2 Syndrome.” Time trial terminator Elise Chabbey launched a huge chase but ran out of road.
It all climaxed in three underdogs writing a fairytale ending on the podium of a historic first African worlds.
And to cap it all, Niamh Fisher-Black finally confirmed her potential with a silver medal, and at the other end of the career arc, the 41-year-old superveteran Mavi García bagged bronze.
The year-long dominators didn’t win, but this was a championship more than worthy of rainbow jersey status.
The ‘weight debate’ derails Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift
Vollering and Ferrand-Prévot were both scrutinized for their weights at the Tour Femmes. (Photo: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
The Tour de France Femmes will be remembered as much for the so-called “weight debate” that it provoked as it will be for PFP’s onslaught on the Alps.
The consternation about rider health that emerged from the transformation of Pauline-“too thin”-Prévot overshadowed the race and distracted from the athletic endeavour.
And while issues like RED-S and the dangerous pursuit of leanness deserve attention and respect, many of the discussions this summer were gendered, hyperbolic, and – in some cases – pure clickbait.
Pro cycling will forever be entwined with the pressures of a weight-governed sport.
But the perils of chasing a target weight require ongoing attention and education, not short-lived incendiary accusation. And while the racing is on, let the racers race, and celebrate the achievements.
Chaos and crisis at the Vuelta a España
Sport and politics intertwined at the Vuelta a España (Photo: MIGUEL RIOPA/AFP via Getty Images)
The 2025 Vuelta a España has so many asterisks and caveats against it that requires its own appendix.
Shortened stages, canceled finals, and mid-stage disruptions tore into race for the red jersey and sapped the energy from the tour.
Increasingly voracious pro-Palestine protests dominated La Vuelta more than any WorldTour super team, and made the athletes a sideshow.
Freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest are more important now than ever. But it’s just a shame that in this case, they totally crippled a grand tour.