Tour de France 2025 | A Day in the Life of Thymen Arensman

For one day, the 2025 Tour de France riders were envied by a large number of people. People often envy cyclists, and those who do so clearly don't know what they're envying. And it never happens because pedaling for hundreds of kilometers is a real grind, let alone when the road climbs and you're pushing hard to outdistance the others. It wasn't for that, however, that they were envied. It was for that drizzle, which seemed so refreshing, falling on their heads. And while not everyone knows how much effort the riders put in, almost everyone knows the refreshing and pleasant sensation of a summer drizzle. And on days when the sun has returned to beat down on our heads, reverberating with heat warnings and baking temperatures, a summer drizzle is a real treat. What we don't have, or have in short supply, always seems more desirable than what we have in abundance.

Thymen Arensman has an abundance of talent and a paucity of victories, despite the fact that twenty-five isn't exactly a young age and he has many years of riding ahead of him. Thymen Arensman is a rollercoaster of a rider, capable of racing and pedaling at high altitude like the best and then struggling on a minor hill on the outskirts of the European cycling empire.

In the Pyrenees, Thymen Arensman wanted to give himself one of his good days. He achieved the lone man in the lead on the Col de Peyresourde (7.1 kilometers at an average gradient of 8.1%), the third and penultimate climb of the day, after a few hours spent chasing Lenny Martinez's polka-dotted daring on the Col du Tourmalet and the Col d'Aspin.

In the kilometers leading to the summit of Peyresurde, Thymen Arensman tried to stretch out his good day as much as possible. Then, towards Superbagnères, he defended it stubbornly, without thinking too much about what was happening behind him, trying to push the pedals as hard as possible without overdoing it. Thymen Arensman has learned not to be the same bully he once was, to maintain his composure and measure, to understand that overdoing things can be exciting, but almost always remains indigestible.

Thymen Arensman never looked back, he always looked ahead, waiting to see the finish banner, to be the first to cross it, and above all to dismount, sit on the asphalt and see the feeling of winning the Tour de France . And above all, to win in the Pyrenees, on those roads even more brutal and grim than the names they bear .

Had he turned around, he still wouldn't have been able to see Jonas Vingegaard sprint and outsprint Tadej Pogacar by just a few meters and a second . A small illusion, rather than a small reality. He wasn't in a hurry to catch him; he knew full well he could, that it wouldn't be too hard to catch him. He caught him right away, then didn't give him a single meter and even dropped him just before the finish line, adding a few seconds to the minute advantage he'd already built.

But we needed to see them together again, in the same frame, one behind the other. Chasing each other, struggling, chasing each other, trying to break away. The wonder of cycling certainly lies in solitude, but here we are good mouths, people who still remember Covid and therefore remember the isolation and prefer the sociality of cycling.

A handful of seconds, however, that counts far less than Jonas Vingegaard's conviction that the outcome of this Tour de France is not yet written, because perhaps Tadej Pogacar is the strongest of all and among the strongest of all time, but he has beaten him twice and that must mean something . Jonas Vingegaard clings to everything, even subtleties , perhaps trivialities, but what's better than a trivial thing to lift one's spirits?

Remco Evenepoel needed a truly foolish idea. But he failed to find it in the opening kilometers of the fourteenth stage of the 2025 Tour de France. And as he climbed toward the summit of the Col du Tourmalet, he began to lose his pedaling, and then his hope. He fell away. He fell into a crevasse as black as the blackness in the eyes of those who consider their desperation unique and insurmountable. All despair is unique and insurmountable, which is precisely why there are none that are particularly special.

Remco Evenepoel got off his saddle, left his bike with the mechanics, got into the team car and abandoned the Tour de France .

His place on the virtual podium was taken by Florian Lipowitz , still the most special of the humans on the bike, riding behind those two, the usual two. He stayed close to them for a long time on the road to Superbagnères. He followed their wheel. He only let go when they started joking, trying to outdo each other. At that moment, he left them to their own devices, deciding it was best to avoid burning out his muscles and lungs to be with them. It will happen, we are sure of it, but not in the Pyrenees, especially not these days, and perhaps not even at this Tour, but it will happen.

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