European Championships 2025

The road

At the start

Rainbow jersey, one week later

Guilherand-Granges, seven days after Kigali, and Tadej Pogačar has brought the rainbow jersey straight to the Ardèche. The circuit gives nothing away — Saint-Romain-de-Lerps three times, the 1.6-kilometre wall of the Val d'Enfer six — and Remco Evenepoel, second in Rwanda and still without a European title, comes again. France has a nineteen-year-old, Paul Seixas, on home roads.

How it was won

1. 1198 km to go

   Straight up the Moulin à Vent

   The Ardèche gives them no warm-up: the road rises out of the start and Hoole, Vacek, Vervaeke, Frigo and Langelotti go clear over the top. Slovenia settle on the front and let them have 2:30.

2. 2105 km to go

   Evenepoel probes off the Lerps

   Second time over Saint-Romain-de-Lerps, seven kilometres at over seven per cent, and Remco Evenepoel attacks the descent. He goes again when Jan Christen moves — and finds Pogačar and a 19-year-old Paul Seixas already on his wheel.

3. 391 km to go

   The podium bridges across

   With ninety kilometres left the eventual podium trio jump across to what is left of the break. Around thirty riders claw their way back on behind them — Ayuso, Skjelmose, Sivakov, Grégoire — and the race looks, briefly, open.

4. 476 km to go

   Seventy-six kilometres out, he goes

   On the lower slopes of the third Saint-Romain-de-Lerps, Tadej Pogačar attacks. Belgium's coach had said an attack from here would end badly. Only Evenepoel can follow, and only for a few minutes; a week after his hundred-kilometre raid in Kigali the Slovenian is gone again.

5. 540 km to go

   A minute, and growing

   Over the Val d'Enfer with forty to go the lead is past a minute and the title is settled in all but name. Evenepoel keeps battling, drops the chase group on the descent, and rides for silver.

6. 66 km to go

   Seixas cracks them for bronze

   Sixth and last time up the Val d'Enfer, 1.6km at 9.7%. The teenage Frenchman attacks it again and again until Ayuso and Scaroni let go before the summit.

7. 7At the line

   Europe after the world

   Pogačar rolls into Guilherand-Granges alone to add the European title to the rainbow jersey, Evenepoel in at 31 seconds, Seixas third at nineteen years old.

The result