For all the spectacle of the yellow jersey battle at the Tour de France, we spend quite of a bit time each July watching stages with little bearing on the general classification. Five or six – or more – days at this upcoming Tour will see the GC riders take a backseat to the action on flatter roads where the fast finishers reign.
Individual Tour stages are among the most highly coveted prizes that the sport's sprinters can win, and so it makes sense that those prizes would be so hotly contested by all the big stars. Curiously, though, the Tour has a way of elevating one of those stars above the others over the course of the race. Even when a bevy of big names roll out at the Grand Départ, it is so often the case that one of them emerges as the clear Sprinter du Tour.
Throughout a lengthy stretch in the last decade, for instance, three sprinters consistently showed up to the Tour vying for favorite status, only to have just one of them gobble up most of the sprint opportunities each year, leaving little for the rest. Marcel Kittel, André Greipel, and Mark Cavendish each enjoyed their respective years of dominance without necessarily dominating throughout the entire decade.
There is no hard and fast rule for acclaiming any one rider as the sprint king for a given Tour, of course. It's about winning sprint stages and maybe – but not necessarily – contending for the green jersey. It's also about vibes.
Last year, for example, two riders carved up most of the sprint stages between them, but one felt more deserving of the title than the other. Escape Collective's Caley Fretz had seen enough after the midpoint of the race to declare Biniam Girmay as the Sprinter du Tour. Jasper Philipsen ultimately finished with the same number of stage victories, but he got off to a slow start while Girmay was making history, and Girmay took home the green jersey in the end too.
So what about this year? As ever, plenty of big names will line up looking for sprint stage glory at the upcoming race, and some seem likelier than others to rule the roost. The past month in particular has given us plenty to consider as marquee sprinters have been plying their trade in races like the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Baloise Belgium Tour as a bigger target looms. Here is how we see the sprint field shaking out at the 2025 Tour de France ...
Tier 1: A big three?
Given how a "big three" enjoyed so much success in the bunch kicks of the 2010s, perhaps it's no surprise that three names stand out in the field as the top contenders for the title of Sprinter du Tour right now.
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