{"id":17206,"date":"2025-07-23T05:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T05:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/17206\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T05:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T05:11:13","slug":"tour-de-france-pogacar-resists-vingegaard-on-ventoux-as-paret-peintre-claims-stage-16-tour-de-france-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/17206\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France: Pogacar resists Vingegaard on Ventoux as Paret-Peintre claims stage 16 | Tour de France 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tour de France debutant Valentin Paret-Peintre banished the bitter memories of Julian Alaphilippe\u2019s misplaced celebrations<\/a> in Carcassonne on Sunday by becoming the fifth French rider to win at the summit of Mont Ventoux.<\/p>\n

For the French, such success on the Giant of Provence, the first in the Tour in 23 years, justified huge celebration and plenty of tears. Paret-Peintre\u2019s impressive victory came at the expense of the indefatigable Ben Healy, who was within a hair\u2019s breadth of taking his second stage win of the Tour.<\/p>\n

It was Paret-Peintre\u2019s second Grand Tour win, after his stage victory in the 2024 Giro. \u201cThis morning I didn\u2019t think this was possible, because I expected [Tadej] Pogacar to want to win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Yet the absence of his Soudal Quick-Step team leader, Remco Evenepoel, who abandoned the Tour in the Pyrenees, opened a door of opportunity for the climber from the Haute-Savoie. \u201cI could see that I wasn\u2019t strong enough to drop Healy in the finale,\u201d he said, of his team\u2019s fourth stage win in this year\u2019s race, \u201cso I focused on trying to beat him in the sprint.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while Healy and Paret-Peintre were playing out the final moments of a sparring match that had started much further down the mountain, Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> was keeping his promise to attack the race leader Pogacar.<\/p>\n

Just 48 hours after Vingegaard\u2019s Visma-Lease a Bike team had been lambasted for their lack of cohesion and accused of disloyalty<\/a> towards the two-time champion by some critics, they were transformed into a cohesive well-drilled unit, working hard to support his efforts to dislodge Pogacar.<\/p>\n

Valentin Paret-Peintre crosses the finish line ahead of Ben Healy on top of Mont Ventoux to win stage 16 of the Tour de France. Photograph: Mosa\u2019ab Elshamy\/AP<\/p>\n

Sepp Kuss, Wout van Aert and Tiesj Benoot put in lengthy turns pacemaking their leader on the never-ending climb, in the hope of finally cracking Pogacar. \u201cThe team did really amazing today,\u201d Vingegaard said. \u201cEverybody worked, there was real commitment from everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Dane\u2019s best efforts, which saw him make several attacks on his rival, came to nothing. On the Ventoux\u2019s cruel final bend, perhaps the worst on the climb, the Slovenian again opened up a gap, sneaking clear to increase his overall lead by another couple of seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe followed me every time he attacked and I followed him,\u201d Vingegaard said after the stage. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I could see any weaknesses today but at least, how good I felt gives me motivation. I will keep trying.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was feeling very good, so I\u2019m happy. I didn\u2019t get any time, but I take a lot of motivation from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet insult was added to injury when Vingegaard collided with a photographer on the Ventoux summit\u2019s cramped finish line. \u201cA photographer stepped right in front of me,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what he was doing. I went down. People who are working on the finish line need to be more careful.\u201d<\/p>\n

However hard he tries, he cannot find any weaknesses in Pogacar\u2019s armour. Vingegaard\u2019s first attacks, in the forested section of the climb, splintered the main peloton and took him across to his teammate Benoot.<\/p>\n

For a fleeting moment and for perhaps the first time in this Tour, Pogacar initially showed signs of stress. At Chalet Reynard however, 6km from the top, the pair were still inseparable, although Vingegaard had one more card to play.<\/p>\n

Tadej Pogacar follows Jonas Vingegaard up Ventoux before going clear in the final metres. Photograph: Papon Bernard\/Reuters<\/p>\n

As they bridged up to another of his teammates, Victor Campenaerts, he had another ally to pace him into the decisive kilometres. But the Dane\u2019s next move, with 4km to race, once more failed to dislodge the race leader.<\/p>\n

The pair\u2019s blistering times on Ventoux shattered all precedents. The past record, set by Spain\u2019s Iban Mayo in a 2004 time trial, was 55 minutes and 51 seconds. Pogacar beat that mark by a minute and 20 seconds, with Vingegaard just two seconds slower.<\/p>\n

Afterwards Pogacar, asked what his limits were, appeared offended by the question. \u201cI don\u2019t think we could ride much faster,\u201d he said. \u201cJonas and his team did very good pacing. On our aero bikes we go pretty fast, maybe we pick up a couple of seconds. I don\u2019t know. What do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n

He maintained too that, despite appearances, he was no Superman. \u201cI\u2019m definitely not Superman. I was born in Ljubljana. Today was an epic climb to do and we brought down the gap quite fast. We saw the winners in the last 800 metres, but even for Superman I don\u2019t think it would have been possible to catch them.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were some other shifts in the overall standings, although Kelso\u2019s Oscar Onley clung on and remains stubbornly in fourth place overall, after finishing 14th on the stage. But Primoz Roglic, ninth on the Ventoux, is moving up the standings and has now climbed into the top five, while the unflagging Healy remains in the Tour\u2019s top 10, in ninth place overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tour de France debutant Valentin Paret-Peintre banished the bitter memories of Julian Alaphilippe\u2019s misplaced celebrations in Carcassonne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-17206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}