Tour de France 2025: the wind from the sea and the storm of riders

What can you predict in this land where the wind is a surprise bag? It turns into a squeaker when you want to hoist the sails and snaps its big jaw at you when you're not expecting a squall. On Saturday, at the start in Lille , it had invited itself into the peloton and Jonas Vingegaard's Visma Lease a Bike had taken advantage of it to dislocate it under its influence. An unplanned pitfall. This Monday, July 7, the wind rose up, in a sky soiled with clouds but without the downpour experienced the day before. Gusts right in the face, therefore, annihilating any desires – the bracing of a pack of riders leaves you warm. Instead of biting their nails, the riders remained huddled together as if on a school trip. The wind held back its chaos. It burst forth differently.

A long-time rider with a loose tongue, when asked to describe the smooth, "round" pedal stroke required for racing in strong winds, went off the rails. He mused: if today's riders, who bomb past 70 km/h, used the gears of his time, "they'd be spinning their legs around their necks." And that's exactly what the stage, which started in Valenciennes,