Australia and Alpecin-Deceuninck scored again in the 112th Tour de France on Saturday’s penultimate stage, sprinter Kaden Groves the strongest out of a breakaway. In completing his Grand Tour Cycle of stage wins, his tenth in total, Groves gave Alpecin its third stage triumph from three different riders. Another Australian fugitive, Ben O’Connor, won two days ago. With only Paris to come, Tadej Pogačar has one hand on his fourth Tour de France trophy and is poised to join Chris Froome on a quartet of yellow jerseys.

With the GC pretty much locked down, Florian Lipowitz will be the first German on the final podium since Andreas Kloden finished runner-up to Óscar Pereiro in 2006.

Lipowitz hasn’t been lower than fourth on GC in all four of his 2025 WorldTour stage races.

The Course

Saturday’s penultimate day was seemingly drawn up for a successful breakaway, as it was rich with little climbs both uncategorized and categorized.

Which breakaway artist is going to score on Saturday? Image by La FlammeRouge

There were a lot of attacks in the rainy first 20 km, Louis Barré getting to the top of Cat. 4 Col de la Croix de la Serra first. For a moment Oscar Onley and Felix Gall were distanced. Then a move with a little more legs flared out–thirteen riders took on Cat. 4 Côte de Valfin, with Stage 15 winner Tim Wellens scoring the one KOM point. At the midway point of 184 km, the breakaway had only a 2:00 lead, maybe because of the inclusion of 11th place Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies), the second-best-placed Frenchman in the 112th edition.

The breakaways weren’t thrilled with Jegat’s inclusion in the escape.

The penultimate climb was 3.5-km, 9 percent Côte de Thésy. Would the break fragment here? Jegat bolted on the others, but it would be Harry Sweeny nabbing the KOM points. Wout van Aert and Michael Woods were part of a chase group attempting to bridge. Sweeney went solo on the way to the final classified climb, fighting the rain and headwind.

HONK HONK 🚨 MAKE WAY FOR HARRY SWEENY📸: @gettyimages.com

— EF Pro Cycling (@efprocycling.com) 2025-07-26T13:23:00.893Z

Some of Sweeney’s breakmates reunited with him on the final climb of Côte de Longeville. The peloton lassoed Woods’ group. A nasty crash took down several riders in the group, leaving Groves, Frank van den Broek and Jake Stewart leading the race. Groves made a break for it with 17 km to go. A quintet chased 28 seconds behind and another handful of riders was +0:48 of the Aussie.

Groves wanted add a Tour win to his seven Vuelta victories.

Groves’ team took the first stage and first yellow via Jasper Philipsen, the second stage via Mathieu van der Poel and it now tallied up the 20th stage.

O’Connor lost his top 10 to Jegat. That made two ProTeam riders in the Tour top-10. Not too shabby.

The final day into Paris isn’t the usual champagne procession followed by multiple Champs-Élysées laps before a sprint. Riders face cobbled Cote de la Butte Montmartre three times in the last 40 km.
2025 Tour de France Stage 20
1) Kaden Groves (Australia/Alpecin-Deceuninck) 4:06:09
2) Frank van den Broek (The Netherlands/Picnic PostNL) +0:54
3) Pascal Eenkhoorn (The Netherlands/Soudal Quick-Step) +0:59

2025 Tour de France GC
1) Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia/UAE-Emirates) 73:55:14
2) Jonas Vingegaard (Denmark/Visma-Lease a Bike) +4:24
3) Florian Lipowitz (Germany/Red Bull) +11:09
4) Oscar Onley (Australia/Picnic-PostNL) +12:12
5) Felix Gall (Austria/Decathlon-AG2R) +17:12
6) Tobias Halland Johannessen (Norway/Uno-X) +20:14