Ben Healy surged out on his own to win Stage 6 at the Tour de France. Mathieu van der Peul also took back the yellow jersey from Tadej Pogacar.

Tadej Pogačar remains the -550 favorite to win the 2025 Tour de France after Stage 6 on Thursday, but the competition remains stiff up front where Mathieu van der Peul (+49000) reclaimed the yellow jersey as overall leader, one second ahead of the three-time champion.

Remco Evenepoel is clearly the man to beat in stage five. The Olympic and world time trial champion was superb at the Dauphine where he took 20 seconds out of Jonas Vingegaard and was 48 seconds ahead of Tadej Pogacar. And with no Filippo Ganna or Stefan Bissegger after their stage one crashes it is hard to look beyond the big three.

A three-week Grand Tour will always contain natural ebbs and flows, and, for much of Monday’s stage between Valenciennes and Dunkirk, it looked as if the peloton had declared an unofficial rest day, with the riders happy to cruise back towards the coast after a weekend of wind, rain and intensity.

If riders were hoping for a relaxing stage 2 to recuperate then they may be disappointed: today’s stage is the longest of the entire Tour, 209km from the small village of Lauwin-Planque to Boulogne-sur-Mer on the northern coast of France.