The three Tour de France stages Tadej Pogačar will want to win most – Sites of Jonas Vingegaard's previous successes bring 'revenge' into play

In the absence of any obvious weak points for Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) at the 2025 Tour de France, one factor in favour of his biggest rival, Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), is the return to three mountain locations where the latter has had the advantage at previous Tours.

Iconic climbs have always proved the point of difference in the race for the yellow jersey at the Tour de France. Be it the Alps, Pyrenees, Massif Central, or a certain 'Giant of Provence', each climb at the Tour is packed with history and anecdotes of cycling icons gone by.

Those featuring in the 2025 route are no different, and are expected to become the battleground for Pogačar and Vingegaard to face off on in just days now. But three stand out from the rest for a specific reason, especially given the current climate of the Slovenian massively having the upper hand ahead of the Grand Départ.

After Pogačar's complete climbing dominance at the last year's Tour, there are three days from previous Tours that Jonas Vingegaard will remember well: Mont Ventoux in 2021, Hautacam in 2022, and the Col de la Loze in 2023. Each of them resulted in more resounding separation from Pogačar in chronological order, the latter two making up part of his back-to-back yellow jersey triumphs, and these climbs are back for 2025.

It will be a return to previous hunting grounds for the Dane, offering him the chance to once again prove superiority in the high mountains. Having raced for the first time since March at the Critérium du Dauphiné and been well away from Pogačar's climbing level, he'll need his final preparations to have closed the gap, but the trio of hellish climbs could become the difference-maker he's after.

But for Pogačar, it provides him a triple shot at redemption, and he'll no doubt be desperate for his UAE team to control each of stages 12, 16 and 18 so he can exact his revenge for previous losses in the world champion's or yellow jersey.

Cyclingnews has looked back at those three days and how the climbs will be tackled once again in the 2025 route as likely key flashpoints in the next chapter of Pogačar and Vingegaard's rivalry.

Kuss, Van Aert and a finishing move on Hautacam

Stage 12 will bring Vingegaard and Pogačar back to where the 2022 race and the former's first yellow jersey was sewn up fully – Hautacam, a legendary hors catégorie climb in the Pyrenees on its seventh Tour appearance.

On that occasion, the damage had been done by Visma up the Col du Granon a week earlier. But as Visma's Sepp Kuss put in a huge performance, and green jersey Wout van Aert finally dropped Pogačar after getting in the break as a satellite rider, Vingegaard rode to the stage victory atop Hautacam in yellow, adding the cherry to his GC triumph.

Hautacam arrives earlier in the 2025 race, but with a relatively easier approach. Three years ago, it featured on a shorter 143km stage, with the HC Col d'Aubisque and Cat.1 Col de Spandelles as the warm-up, while in 2025, the Cat.1 Col du Soulor and Cat.2 Col des Bordères will make up the run-in on the 180km day.

After a brutal eight-climb day to Le Mont Dore on stage 10, which closes out the first week on Bastille Day, the second week will burst into life after just two stages en route from Auch to Hautacam for the GC favourites.

Pogačar will be eyeing brutal redemption after his loss in 2022, and Vingegaard will be looking for a repeat, as the race heads into his favoured territory for the first time after 11 stages suited better to the world champion's strengths. It's set to be a belter.

Danes have great memories from Hautacam, not only from Vingegaard, but also Bjarne Riis, who climbed the 13.5km and 7.8% average gradient in a record time of 34:41 en route to overall victory at the 1996 Tour. That record likely won't be standing after July 17 this year, though it is Pogačar who looks the more likely to break it for the moment, on his first shot at revenge.

A first sign of weakness on Ventoux

The 2021 Tour came without much tension for Pogačar, who dominated from start to finish, especially in the mountains, but stage 11's double Mont Ventoux ascent provided a look into the future and a sign of things to come from his emerging rival.

Vingegaard, who started that Tour as support for Primož Roglič, came to the fore on the legendary Provence climb, dropping Pogačar and showing that the would-be two-time champion was not, in fact, as invincible as he seemed.

Ultimately, despite climbing faster, Vingegaard was caught on the descent finish by Pogačar into Malaucène, but it laid the groundwork for what Visma attempted and accomplished on Granon and Hautacam a year later. He'll want to complete what he started four years ago.

As the moonscape of a Tour icon rears its head as a summit finish once again, for an 11th time, a new legend will be added to the likes of Chris Froome, Alberto Contador, Eddy Merckx, and, most recently, Thomas De Gendt, who have felt the euphoria of conquering Ventoux.

Arriving on stage 16 to open up the final week of decisive GC racing, Ventoux will be the showcase of a hockey stick 171.5-kilometre route, with a pure test up the 15.7km from the Bédouin side.

History suggests that a single climb day should suit Pogačar's explosivity better, but Vingegaard will enter the day knowing that the last time they met on Ventoux, he showed the world he could climb at the same level, if not higher, than his rival. After falling behind him over the past two seasons, it could be the perfect place to take back the crown.

Ventoux has long been one of the Tour's most special ascents, so it's only right that one of these two modern greats gets to write their name into its history.

"I'm gone. I'm dead"

Alongside all of his so far 99 professional victories, one of the most memorable moments of Pogačar's illustrious career will forever be his capitulation on the Col de La Loze in the 2023 Tour.

Having suffered defeat at the hands of Vingegaard on the time trial to Combloux a day prior, Pogačar entered stage 17 with time to make up, but with the hardest mountain stage of the race offering him a chance to do it.

However, on the lower slopes of the brutal climb en route to the finish in Courchevel, there was a tragic scene for the Slovenian, with his jersey unzipped, his face visibly showing weakness, and a gap quickly forming between him to the rest of the GC favourites.

The race was over as he haemorrhaged time, and the new in-race radio offered up its value in one sentence as Pogačar conceded: "I'm gone. I'm dead." He would go on to lose 5:45 to his rival as he was guided home by Marc Soler.

Stage 18 of the 2025 Tour brings the Col de la Loze back in as the highest point of the race (Souvenir Henri Desgrange), but the riders will climb it from a different direction and without a descent and altiport run to the line, now finishing at the summit.

Instead of turning out of Courchevel towards Meribel, the 2025 route will bring the riders through the altitude-numbered ski resorts, up the Col de la Loze side they descended in 2023, with the 26.4km climb averaging a 6.5% gradient. It will be a 5450m elevation gain stage, with the Col du Glandon (21.7km at 5.1%) and Col de la Madeleine (19.3km at 7.8%) preceding the summit finish.

As the GC gap exploded two years ago from 10 seconds at the start of stage 16 to more than seven minutes after that trip up and down the climb, Soler, who stayed with him to the line, has confirmed it will be revenge that Pogačar is after.

"It was a tough day, physically and mentally. I did everything I could to motivate him, but it didn't work anymore," Soler told WielerRevue.NL.

"This year it's from the other side, but still, we're returning to the climb where it went wrong two years ago. We still joke about that day sometimes. Especially about the face he said I pulled while motivating him. It's an anecdote we still tell sometimes, but this year we want to show that we can win on the Col de la Loze. It's a good moment to take revenge!"

While history is on Vingegaard's side, with Pogačar also losing time to Primož Roglič up the brutal Alpine climb in the 2020 Tour's Queen stage, that iconic day in 2023 is perhaps the last real 'bad day' the world champion has had on the bike, where he completely cracked.

Revenge and another stage victory in yellow is likely what Pogačar will be after in 2025, to both all-but cap off a fourth GC victory at the Tour de France, but also to right the wrongs of that previous defeat.

Pogačar's revenge trail is already underway

Hautacam, Mont Ventoux and the Col de la Loze actually made up three out of four climbs where Pogačar has previously struggled on the 2025 calendar, with Tour organisers ASO also putting the Côte de Domancy and climb to Combloux on the route of this year's Dauphiné.

The day before he said, "I'm gone. I'm dead," Pogačar was well beaten by Vingegaard in the stage 16 time trial of the 2023 race, with the Dane storming his way up the Domancy ascent, known for its use at the 1981 World Championships, where Bernard Hinault won, in one of the best ITT performances of all time.

It finally brought separation between the two favourites after two weeks of wheel-to-wheel battle. But when it returned to action at the pre-Tour, eight-day WorldTour stage race in June, fortunes and form were reversed.

Pogačar's first revenge match of 2025 ended with him completely flipping the script, dropping Vingegaard and the entirety of the GC field on the 20-minute climb, with a seated attack no less, before powering to a dominant stage win, with everyone, including Vingegaard, losing more than a minute.

It was a sign of things to come and laid down an ominous marker of just how much better the world champion is in 2025, even on just 6km of uphill. If the same form is witnessed at the Tour, Pogačar will be due three more servings of revenge, and Vingegaard will be left with bittersweet memories of the climbs he once conquered.

People will no doubt complain of boring dominance and greed if Pogačar completes his arc of redemption on three sites of previous defeat, but his hunger to do so will override any desire to keep the peace. He'll want to win as many stages as possible en route to overall victory, but these three are the stages he'll want most.

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