The Tour de France does not do gentle exits. One minute you’re grinding toward a mountaintop finish on the Plateau de Solaison, two minutes off the defending champion’s wheel and holding second overall. The next you’re limping into an ambulance with your right arm in a sling, your race over on a roadside kerb.
That was Jonas Vingegaard’s Sunday. The two-time Tour champion crashed roughly 20 kilometers from the end of Stage 15 — a 183.9-kilometer haul from Champagnole to the Plateau de Solaison — alongside a few other riders near a kerb. He stayed down for several moments before walking to the waiting ambulance, arm immobilized. Visma–Lease a Bike confirmed the withdrawal on social media: “Jonas Vingegaard has been forced to withdraw from the Tour de France after crashing towards the end of Stage 15. We will provide an update on his condition as soon as more information becomes available.”
Teammate Sepp Kuss and UAE Emirates XRG’s Isaac Del Toro also went down in the incident. Both remounted and continued.
The crash effectively ends what had already become a one-man show. Tadej Pogačar entered Stage 15 with a stranglehold on the yellow jersey — 2:42 ahead of Vingegaard after the first rest day, four stage wins already in his pocket, and an attack on the Col du Haar the previous afternoon that no rival could answer. When word of Vingegaard’s crash reached the yellow jersey group, the bunch eased off, uncertain whether the Dane would continue. Once it was clear he would not, racing resumed.
And there it is. The GC fight that race organizers tried to stretch into three weeks of suspense collapsed in a single afternoon — not on a climb, not under an attack, but on a kerb with 12 miles to go.
Vingegaard, 29, won the Tour in 2022 and 2023 and this season became one of only eight male riders to claim all three Grand Tours. He arrived at this Tour as the only realistic counter to Pogačar’s march toward a fifth yellow jersey, and through 14 stages he had held second place — durable, consistent, and thoroughly unable to close the gap. The Visma team won the opening team time trial to put Vingegaard in yellow on Stage 1 before Pogačar seized the lead on Stage 3 and never let go. On the Tourmalet summit finish of Stage 6, Pogačar attacked with 43 kilometers remaining and put time into everyone. On Stage 10, he rode solo for his third win. On Stage 14, he waited until the final two kilometers of the Col du Haar to accelerate, and Vingegaard could only manage fourth.
The numbers told the story before the kerb did. Pogačar’s lead was growing at every summit. Vingegaard was defending second, not threatening first. Now he is not even defending that.
The race rolls on to a 26.1-kilometer individual time trial in Évian-les-Bains on Stage 16, then through the Alps and onto the Champs-Élysées. Pogačar’s remaining challengers — Remco Evenepoel on the podium, Tom Pidcock climbing the standings — will race for positions behind a man who no longer has a rival at his level in this Tour. Visma’s update on Vingegaard’s condition is pending. The Tour’s suspense is not.
Sources
- Yahoo Sports / AP — Jonas Vingegaard out of Tour de France after crash on Stage 15
- Cyclingnews — Tour de France 2025 race coverage and stage reports