Six days before the start of the Tour de France 2025 and, as tradition dictates in the week preceding the start of the world's most important stage race, teams are revealing their choices one after another.

Among the many that today announced their men for the Grande Boucle were also the five French teams registered for the event: Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team, Groupama-FDJ, Cofidis and Team TotalEnergies.

The first will try to carve out a leading role, especially relying on the excellent form of Kévin Vauquelin (3rd in the French national road championships and 2nd in the overall general classification of the last Tour of Switzerland after winning five stage top-five finishes) and the sprint potential of the eternal Arnaud Démare, winner of two Tour stages in his career (in 2018 and 2017). Alongside them, the red and black team will field Raul Garcia Pierna, Ewen Costiou, Clément Venturini, Amaury Capiot, Mathis Le Berre and Cristian Rodriguez.

"The Tour de France 2024 gave us so much! We want the 2025 edition to do the same. The fact that a large part of the race passes through Brittany is a great motivation for many of our riders like Mathis Le Berre and Ewen Costiou who come from there. The Tour has the power to take the athletes who participate to another dimension, and a clear example is Kévin Vauquelin last year. Our young leader, extraordinary in every respect, will have the opportunity to experience particularly intense emotions by crossing his homeland, Normandy, an ideal occasion to imprint unforgettable moments in memory," said the team's General Manager Emmanuel Hubert.

Still talking about France, the new French champion Dorian Godon will not be at the start in Lille since his team, the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team, has chosen to focus on Felix Gall as captain and a vast battery of stage hunters composed of Aurélien Paret-Peintre, Clément Berthet, Bruno Armirail, Oliver Naesen, Stefan Bissegger, Bastien Tronchon and Callum Scotson.

In the absence of the blue-white-red tricolor, home fans can console themselves by admiring the feats of an increasingly rising star like Romain Gregoire who, after already pocketing two seasonal victories and several bold performances, will lead a Groupama-FDJ that will also count on Lewis Askey, Cyril Barthe, Valentin Madouas, Guillaume Martin-Guyonnet, Quentin Pacher, Paul Penhoët and Clément Russo to try to achieve a stage victory that has been missing from the French formation in their home race for six years.

"We are leaving for the Tour with a team focused on a single priority objective: the stage victory. The 8 men at the start are physically ready and fully concentrated on this goal. To succeed, we will need to be intelligent tactically as well, and I think this is the strength of the group we have assembled for a race, the Tour de France, where it is increasingly difficult to emerge. We have riders with different and complementary profiles for all the stages on the program, and we are confident that they can help us raise our arms again," said Philippe Mauduit, one of the sports directors who will be involved in France in the coming weeks.

The Cofidis drought at the Tour is definitely shorter, having won a stage in San Sebastian with Victor Lafay and another in Belleville-en-Beaujolais with Ion Izagirre two years ago. The latter will be part of the team this year and will almost certainly have carte blanche to play his chances again in the most challenging stages, just like Emmanuel Buchmann, while Alex Aranburu, Bryan Coquard, Alexis Renard, Benjamin Thomas, Damien Touzé and Dylan Teuns will have space in the many stages that will call out sprinters and puncheurs.

Finally, the only French team at the start not belonging to the World Tour, TotalEnergies, will try to surprise as they did last year, with Anthony Turgis who in 2024 in Troyes overcame other breakaway riders to obtain a prestigious stage victory for himself and the team. Alongside him, with the idea of repeating their success, Jean-René Bernaudeau's team will bring to Lille Mathieu Burgaudeau, Jordan Jegat, Mattéo Vercher, Thomas Gachignard, Alexandre Delettre, Steff Cras and Émilien Jeannière, a name that in 2025, given the good placings obtained on more than one occasion, has already distinguished himself.