The 2025 Tour de France is set to be a very exciting one. The race will once again feature, in principle, all of cycling’s top stars: Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel. However, the Grande Boucle will also face a major problem.
The race has already announced its route. Practically everything is ready for the Grand Départ de Lille in July. But there is still the issue of the wildcards which, with the signings of Julian Alaphilippe by Tudor Pro Cycling Team and Tom Pidcock by Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team, has become very hot.
The Tour de France will have 2 wildcards to be handed out for 2025. In addition to the two aforementioned teams, there is also TotalEnergies (French team) and Uno-X Mobility, which thanks mainly to Jonas Abrahamsen was one of the top teams in the 2024 edition.
Therefore, the Tour de France organization will have to choose only 2 of these 4 mentioned teams to complete the list of participants of the race in 2025.
The possible first to be discarded could be TotalEnergies. Despite being a French team, it is not uncommon for grand tours to refuse to invite teams from their country. Without going any further, in 2024 Burgos BH was not chosen to participate in the Vuelta a España. Moreover, there are already several local teams that will be in the Tour.
What there won’t be as many of are French stars. For that reason, it becomes difficult to imagine Tudor out of the race. Alaphilippe will be competing in his first year as team leader. As one of France’s best riders in recent years, he would well deserve his invitation.
If Alaphilippe’s Tudor gets one invitation, the other will most likely be decided between Q36.5 and One-X. Is Tom Pidcock worth a place in the Tour de France? No doubt, the Brit is a star, but perhaps not enough to take away something the Norwegian team has earned through their performances in the Grande Boucle.
Personally, if it were the Tour de France I’d go with Tudor and Uno-X Mobility. However, nothing is clear-cut. What is certain is that they will have to give it a lot of thought to decide on only 2 of the 4 teams that, to tell the truth, all of them have strong reasons to be able to participate.
Source: www.ciclismoaldia.es