[Predictions Thread] 2025 Tour de France - Stage 6: Bayeux > Vire Normandie (2.UWT)

Stage Info

Route	Profile	Finale Route	Stage starts: 12:45 CEST
Finale Profile	TimeTable		Stage finishes: 17:26 CEST

Weather

24-25°C, Fully sunny, 10 to 15km/h North East wind

Stage Breakdown

Hello everyone and welcome to the sixth stage of the Tour!

Sorry for yesterday's predictions, I was fully dead after the stage and the other mods had to do a quick one, I hope you all got to drink an Embuscade!

Now onto the last stage of our Normandie trilogy.

We start in Bayeux, making the news today, with the announcement from the president that its jewel, the Tapisserie de Bayeux, will be lent to the British museum for a full year in 2026 2027. As I said, the city is known for its Tapisserie as well as its Cathedrale and for cycling, it's known to be the hometown of current french hero, Kevin Vauquelin, who will be keen to win.

Now the stage is an interesting one. As you know, historically the Tour in Normandy means sprints, and as we've seen in Rouen, ASO wants to break this and as it so happens, Thierry Gouvenou, the Tour Designer, is from Vire, the finish town of the day, so as you can imagine, he knows the roads by hearts and took pleasure in the design.

We head south after Bayeux, into what is called the Suisse Normande, as a reference to the terrain which sort of looks like Switzerland. As you can guess, it is hilly, the hilliest part of Normandie in fact, into the continuity of the Massif Armoricain, which gives most of the climbs in Bretagne the Tour is more used to. Before we get to that point there is the IS really early on in the stage. As we head into the area that Guillaume Martin calls home, the riders will have several Cat 3 to get KOM points.

The finale is easier than Tuesday while the overall stage is way more exhausting. The cote de Vaudry at 5k from the line will matter a fair bit but the most important thing is the final km with 700m at 10% with 14% near the line.

With that in mind here are our predictions:

★★★ Pogacar, Van der Poel

★★ Vauquelin, Gregoire, Vingegaard, Skjelmose, Evenepoel

★ Breakaway

Same shit as stage 2 and 4, either one of the two will win. A breakaway scenario is not impossible but unlikely due to the fact that Vauquelin is in 3rd place in GC and he will want stage stage more than he has wanted anything in his life. The fact that the finale is less hard favours MVDP, but seeing the sprint of Pogi in Boulogne and Rouen makes me think that even in that setup he can challenge MVDP.

That's it for us, what is your prediction for the stage?