If you know anything about cycling, you’ve probably heard of the Tour de France. The world’s most celebrated and difficult biking race, the Tour spans three weeks every July, quickly postceded by the Tour de France Femmes.
Despite its overwhelming popularity, the Tour has disappointed fans and viewers in recent years due to the dominance of a certain rider: Tadej Pogačar. The Slovenian rider has won four of the past six Tours, proving himself to be arguably the best cyclist in the world. Challenged only by Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard, Pogačar’s streak has led the race organizers to attempt creating a “Pogačar-proof” course to keep him from winning for several years.
This “Anti-Pogi-Tour,” as some have named it, is essentially an effort to revive viewership by making a course that will challenge Pogačar. Some theorize that this was the reason behind the 2025 Tour having so many intense climbs, as Pogačar struggled with the uphill portions in recent years. However, whether or not Pogačar’s success factored into the design of the 2025 Tour, it’s undeniable that the course did not stunt his success.
In the midst of this impressive yet increasingly predictable campaign, fans of cycling have found more exciting results in the Tour de France Femmes, which concluded in early August with French rider Pauline Ferrand-Prévot emerging victorious. As the first ever French rider to win the women’s Tour, and the first French cyclist to win since 1985, her victory has sparked huge excitement throughout France. Within minutes of her win, a televised phone call from President Macron proved the scale of Ferrand-Prévot’s accomplishment. The call made her, in the eyes of many, a successor to Bernard Hinault, who was the last French cyclist to win the men’s Tour.
Despite the excitement around her win, Ferrand-Prévot will take home ten times less prize money than Pogačar, a grim reminder of the large gap that remains between men’s and women’s sports. Of course, because the men’s Tour has a much more famed and longstanding history, and is composed of twenty-one (compared to the women’s nine) stages of the race, a drop in pay is not surprising. However, since the women’s Tour was revived in 2022, the women’s side of the sport has grown rapidly, allowing for more female riders to pursue cycling as their full-time job. As popularity increases, aided greatly by Ferrand-Prévot’s victory, viewership and payment will hopefully accompany it. And, with Pogačar currently dominating the men’s side, now is the perfect time to tune into the women’s Tour.
