Tour de France stage 18: Ben O'Connor wins Tour's queen stage as Pogacar slays his Col de la Loze ghosts
With more than 5000 metres of climbing on the menu, it was always going to be a pivotal day, but perhaps slightly less than it looked like being at the halfway point of the stage.
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After Jonathan Milan had scooped up the intermediate sprint points, the lower slopes of the Col du Glandon were enlivened by an attack from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's Primoz Roglic. It was a startlingly early move by a rider in the GC top 10, and excitement climbed even further as Visma Lease-A-Bike paced strongly on the second mountain of the day, the Col de la Madeleine, with Vingegaard putting in an attack a few kilometres from the top to test Pogacar.
By the summit the yellow jersey had been shorn of teammates, and with Matteo Jorgenson leading Vingegaard down the other side as fast as he could, it appeared the Dutch team had played a tactical blinder. But on the valley road between the Madeleine and the Col de la Loze Jorgenson pushed on with O'Connor and Colombian Einer Rubio, while Vingegaard and Pogacar were joined by a group behind containing multtiple domestiques for both men.
Whether the decision to let the front three press ahead was tactical or due to fatigue, it all-but-neutralized the GC race, not just in the valley but also up most of the final ascent.
That enabled the impressive O'Connor — who dropped Rubio with 16 kilometres remaining — to record the second Tour stage win of his career. Pogacar finally created a gap in the final few hundred metres of the climb, and will be satisfied that he successfully dealt with everything Visma threw at him throughout a taxing day.
🥳🥇 #TDF2025
Stage 18 winner – what a ride! pic.twitter.com/2YVrSP6CNk
— GreenEDGE Cycling (@GreenEDGEteam) July 24, 2025
Jacob Whitehead and Duncan Alexander break down an intriguing stage.
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There are 21 stages of the Tour de France and 23 teams at the race. Even if honours are shared out with the evenness of siblings splitting the last slice of cake, two teams will go home disappointed.
Generally though, two or three teams tend to dominate — meaning that half-a-dozen teams endure anonymous races. The Tour is the flagship event of the cycling calendar. Anonymity is a Bad Thing.
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Teams who fall into this classification this year? Cofidis, Israel-Premier Tech, Movistar, Astana, Intermarche-Wanty, and Lotto.
But until Thursday, that list would have included Jayco AlUla — the Australia-based team bankrolled by the Saudi Arabian government.
But by now, Jayco were riding with desperation. Ben O'Connor has spoken of the difficulty of entering breaks at this Tour, with the majority of teams fighting for the handful of stages not divided up between the GC and sprint teams.
'It goes on for so long, there's just a much bigger time frame for figuring out when is the right move, because people get tired, and then you think it's the right one, and then it's not, and this whole cycle starts again,' he explained on Wednesday. 'So it's been kind of funny trying to make the breaks here.'
O'Connor had initially been targeting Friday's stage to La Plagne, but when he found himself in a strong group heading up the Col du Glandon, decided to attack. When Pogacar and Vingegaard bridged over to the group on the ascent of the Madeleine, before slowing down the race in the next valley, he kickstarted an attack away from them.
Only Matteo Jorgenson and Eimar Rubio followed, but the Australian burned them off his wheel, eventually shaking Rubio with 16km remaining. His lead never came under serious threat — remaining calm, and with exceptional form, to win by almost two minutes.
🏆 The final kick towards an amazing win! Relive the final KM of today's stage!
🏆 Les derniers efforts avant une victoire légendaire ! Voici le dernier KM de cette 18ème étape#TDF2025 pic.twitter.com/uuBN1hdYdN
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 24, 2025
'There was a perfect opportunity to go in the valley and this is a climb I actually have some good memories on, because I rode for my teammate at the time, Felix Gall, to the win over here in 2023,' O'Connor said post-race.
'It's the biggest race in the world, but it's for sure the cruelest. I've wanted to have another victory for so many years now. I've been fighting with thirds and fourths, and been so close, but I couldn't be more proud.'
Jacob Whitehead
The Col de la Loze is a cruel mountain. Pogacar knows this well. He has brooded over this climb, the location where, more definitively than on any other day of his career, he was found wanting. Jonas Vingegaard cracked him here, climbing from its other side, in the 2023 Tour de France.
'I'm gone, I'm dead,' Pogacar gasped over his team radio. On the morning of the stage, those words were clearly still in the yellow jersey's ears.
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'It's been annoying hearing 'I'm gone, I'm dead' on Eurosport these past few years,' he told Belgian outlet Sporza. 'Let's rewrite that story.'
He may have this race all but won, but the Col de la Loze was personal — he wanted to beat Vingegaard here.
Both Visma and UAE appeared to have tired each other entering its upper slopes after a madcap early part of the stage — with Vingegaard only launching his attack in the last kilometre of the stage.
As it was, both Pogacar and Oscar Onley followed his move smoothly — before the Slovenian sailed away in the final ramps to finish nine seconds ahead of his rival, plus bonus seconds.
Realistically, this was the stage that Vingegaard needed to make major inroads on — Friday's stage is effectively a miniaturised version of today's parcours.
But the lateness of his attack appeared to imply that the Dane's legs were not where they needed to be for a dominant attack — it allowed Pogacar to ride a defensive race until he could exploit his superior acceleration.
'Today was a brutal day, five hours in the saddle, and I'm not sure I've ever done such a hard stage in the Tour before,' Vingegaard said post-stage. '(But) it looked like we were pretty even today. (Pogacar) had a few seconds in the end but the Tour is not over. Still.'
Pogacar does not mind that. Today was not just about the Tour — it was also about absolution.
Jacob Whitehead
Florian Lipowitz has looked like the third-best climber on this Tour, but as he finally crossed the summit of the Col de la Loze, one minute and 39 seconds behind podium rival Oscar Onley, it underscored his tactical naivety.
In many ways, Onley and Lipowitz are opposites of each other despite their tender ages, fighting for third at 22 and 24 years old respectively.
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Lipowitz rides like a far younger professional — despite his undeniable power, he often exposes himself to unnecessary risk. Onley is more naturally conservative, happy to sit in the bunch and try and survive it being whittled down.
If attacks come, Lipowitz's instinct is to immediately attack, while Onley has been happy to bring back moves at his own tempo. This is something of a surprise — with Onley arguably the more explosive rider, while Lipowitz has a larger engine.
But no day on this Tour has exposed those differences like stage 18 — with Onley now firmly back in a thrilling fight for third.
As the race fractured up the Col de Madeleine, Lipowitz chose to chase Vingegaard and Pogacar, while Onley remained in the main bunch. It left Lipowitz in no-man's-land, forced to work solo in the following valley to bridge back to the leaders. Then, the German immediately counter-attacked — moving up the road and at one point holding a lead of almost three minutes. At this point, the podium battle looked to have moved decisively in his favour.
But that earlier work came back with a vengeance. Lipowitz rapidly began to shed time in the final 15km of the climb — while Onley, meanwhile, was brought back to the main bunch by teammates.
4th at the summit following the favourites, hats off to Oscar 🤗
4ème au sommet en suivant les favoris, chapeau Oscar 🇬🇧#TDF2025 l @picnicpostnl pic.twitter.com/mkjrmwrZe4
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 24, 2025
By the time that they had caught Lipowitz, the white jersey was completely drained. He slipped straight out the back of that group, while Onley impressively had the energy to follow Pogacar and Vingegaard, only being dropped by them in the final 500m.
Going into the final mountain stage, Onley only trails Lipowitz by 22 seconds — with a summit finish to come. It is now the most compelling battle of the race.
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Lipowitz barely had the energy to lift his hands above his head on the white jersey podium. Onley, by contrast, was already in the showers of the Picnic-PostNL bus.
Jacob Whitehead
No-one wants to return to the more conservative cycling tactics of the 2000s and 2010s, where a day like stage 18 would have been controlled over the first two hors categorie climbs and then raced aggressively in the final few kilometres of the Col de la Loze.
But perhaps today showed that the current milieu, encapsulated by its high-carb, high-risk approach has its limits. Former England soccer manager Sven Goran Eriksson became known for his phrase 'first half good, second half not so good', and that is a useful description of what happened on Thursday afternoon.
The Col du Glandon is a climb that is as unusual as it is beautiful. Where mountains such as the Col de la Madeleine take riders upwards at a steady gradient, the Glandon is uneven, and even contains a couple of steep downhills as you head the way the race did today. That unevenness can encourage attacking mayhem and so it proved today, with Roglic attacking, eventual stage winner O'Connor bridging across and the peloton being thinned down to the usual favorites with more than a hundred kilometres left to race.
Visma had Jorgenson up front too, and after he crossed the summit of the Glandon in third place, it looked like the team was plotting a similar move to the one that worked so well for them in the pivotal stage in this year's Giro d'Italia.
💥 Let's go! Jonas Vingegaard attacks! @TamauPogi stays on his wheel!
💥 Et c'est parti ! Jonas Vingegaard attaque ! @TamauPogi ne le lâche pas d'une semelle !#TDF2025 pic.twitter.com/Q1z2V6qSBj
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 24, 2025
And in some ways it did. After Vingegaard and his team pushed even harder on both the ascent of the Madeleine — the Visma leader put in an exploratory attack near the top — and then down the other side, Pogacar was clearly on the limit. At one point he radioed to his team about the speed at which Jorgenson was taking the super-fast descent.
At this point of the day it looked like we were about to witness an all-timer of a Tour de France stage. But then… not much happened. Whether it was tactical or fatigue-based, or more likely a combination of the two, Pogacar rode defensively while Vingegaard wasn't willing to risk another attack that could have put him in the red and ended his slim hopes of overhauling the Slovenian.
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Anyone tuning in for the closing stages is likely to have been underwhelmed by what they saw, but those who saw the whole day will always remember the Glandon and the Madeleine fondly. For a brief moment the race had everything, everywhere, all at once.
Duncan Alexander
Lenny Martinez is strengthening his grip on the polka dot jersey, a classification which has its own hold on the French public. Bucket hats are thrown from caravans, T-shirts line the sides of Alpine slopes.
But right now, Lenny Martinez is also strengthening his grip on the Bahrain Victorious team car, which is dragging him up the Col du Glandon in a manner that is very much not allowed.
The notion of the sticky bottle is an old one in cycling. Effectively, it is when a rider holds onto their bottle when collecting it from the team car for too long — giving them a free boost up the course as the driver subtly accelerates while holding on to the cyclist.
Martinez did not just take one sticky bottle — but three of them in succession, receiving three accelerations up the Glandon as a result. He pipped Thymen Arensman over the summit to earn 20 points in the polka dot jersey race — also setting a record climbing time up the mountain. He wasn't the only one, either, with Kevin Vauquelin also punished for a similar offence on Thursday.
Sanction en vue pour Lenny Martinez ? En difficulté dans le col du Glandon, le Français a visiblement utilisé la technique du "bidon collé" pour remonter…
Suivez la 18e étape en intégralité sur Eurosport et HBO Max #LesRP #TDF2025 pic.twitter.com/X29iKHhWdS
— Eurosport France (@Eurosport_FR) July 24, 2025
Martinez was immediately criticised by professional riders. Fellow Frenchman Thibaut Pinot replied to a video of the incident with a 'sick' emoji.
It left race organisers with a decision to make — under race rules, they could have disqualified him from the race, but that option would have been seismic, especially to a home rider with a chance of taking the jersey. Instead he was docked eight points from his total, which leaves him 33 behind Pogacar in the standings, a gap that might be difficult to close even with the help of a car.
Jacob Whitehead
🎙 🇸🇮@TamauPogi: "I would have liked to win the stage, but the priority is, of course, the Yellow Jersey." 💛
💛 Interview with the #LCLYearlyYearlyJersey wearer ⤵️ 💛#TDF2025 https://t.co/Q8PUbUrWPK
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 24, 2025
Another tough — albeit short — assignment in the mountains, with the Col du Pre a less-well-known but extremely difficult climb midway through the stage, before the 1980s-flavour to the 2025 race continues with a finish at La Plagne, a climb used in 1984 and 1987 but which has not featured in the Tour since 2002.
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