Tour de France 2025: Slovenia's cycling superstar takes yellow jersey
Defending champion Tadej Pogačar finished second in the first of two individual time trials in this year's Tour de France to claim the overall leader's yellow jersey. The Slovenian finished only behind Belgium's Remco Evenepoel and is now sitting comfortably in the general classification, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.
Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) is 42 seconds ahead of Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step), whose win in the time trial secured him second place in the general classification (GC). In stage 5 the reigning time trial world champion proved once again that this is his discipline.
The Slovenian cycling megastar was also on great form as he roared on to finish in second place on a mostly flat parcours, 16 seconds behind the Belgian.
In addition to claiming the yellow jersey, Pogačar put additional time into his biggest rival, Denmark's Jonas Vingegaard, who is now one minute and 13 seconds behind the Slovenian in the GC.
Pogačar, 26, kept the polka dot jersey of the best climber and also donned the green jersey of the leader in the points classification.
"Finally, I got the green jersey at the Tour as well. But what is most important is that we did a really good time trial today and that we took the yellow jersey," he told the Slovenian public broadcaster, happy with the overall advantage he now has.
Pogačar gave it all he had during the time trial but the road is still long. "The road to Paris is long, breakaways still have many stages at their disposal to try and take the yellow jersey, so it is not a must to keep it. The goal is to have it on in Paris."
Andrej Hauptman, a Slovenian who serves as sports director for UAE Team Emirates, told the press that the time trial was "a first real test and now we are all happy".
Another Slovenian GC contender in the race, Primož Roglič finished 12th in the latest Tour de France stage, just ahead of Vingegaard. The 35-year-old Slovenian now ranks eighth overall, two minutes and a half behind Pogačar.
