Paul Seixas and Isaac del Toro have traded places in our Power Rankings. 📸 A.S.O./Gaëtan Flamme.

Hey Subscribers,

With the men’s Tour de France just a few tantalising weeks away, now is the perfect time for a major update to our TDF Power Rankings.

Following the results of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (aka the Dauphiné), there are plenty of changes to the previous ranking as riders show their form and fitness ahead of July’s main event.

Daniel 🫶

The Frenchman’s season has lurched from one misstep to another, and he only remains on our 15-rider list out of loyalty to those we started with, as he was in our initial Power Rankings at the start of the year. During our last update in April, we noted that Gaudu needed to arrest his decline with a confidence-boosting performance at the de Romandie, but he didn’t finish any higher than 55th in any stage and lost over 40 minutes to Tadej Pogačar in the overall standings.

A fifth place in the one-day Boucles de l’Aulne-Châteaulin was a welcome result, but we’ve not seen Gaudu in action since. Apart from a couple of promising results at Paris-Nice and the UAE Tour, he’s been a shadow of his former self. He called 2025 his hardest year yet, and despite a new coach, the 29-year-old’s form is showing a worrying decline. We might not see him race until the Tour de France, with no races on his June programme. If, and it feels like an if, he does go to the Tour de France next month, the best he and his team can hope for is a stage-hunting role for a rider who once came close to a podium.

Given the injuries Onley sustained at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see him miss the Tour de France. Yes, he finished the stage to Crest-Voland despite crashing into a ravine, dislocating a shoulder and cutting his legs to ribbons, but crashes like that can really knock a rider, and the long-term effects can be significant. It’s not just the time Onley might miss from training, but the jolt to his physical and mental systems that comes with finding yourself lying in a tree several metres above the ground.

Six months into the Netcompany Ineos assignment, and it’s really not gone to plan for the team’s marquee signing. He was solid in his first outing at the Volta ao Algarve back in February, but then he crashed and got sick at Paris-Nice. He rebounded with 12th at Catalunya, but failed to finish Romandie, and now he’s going into the Tour, potentially, with another DNF to his name. The training base might be there, but the results certainly aren’t.

Call it luck, call it whatever you want, but it’s certainly been a tough start for the 23-year-old in his new team’s colours. It’s worth noting it’s still early days. If you cast your mind back to 2010 and Bradley Wiggins’ first season at Team Sky, following his breakthrough fourth-place finish at the Tour the year before, it took the British rider two failed attempts at the Tour before he finally hit the jackpot. Onley is, of course, very different to Wiggins, both on and off the bike, and all it might take is a reset before the Scot finds his groove. But pulling it all together ahead of the Tour de France might be too much of a stretch; we’ll be in the Pyrenees in three weeks, and right now Netcompany don’t have a clear leader.