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‘There are many outcomes for us to be happy in Paris’: Felix Gall Tour de France 2025 interview
Felix Gall is competing in his third Tour de France as Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale’s protected leader in the GC. This follows on from a successful debut at the race in 2023, when the Austrian scored a victory on the queen stage to Courchevel and an impressive top ten result in the overall standings.
After preparing at altitude in the French Alps and a brief return to racing at the Tour de Suisse, the 27-year-old from southern Austria assures us that he is ‘ready for the Tour de France’.
Cyclist caught up with the Austrian in Lille ahead of the 2025 Tour de France to discuss his Tour de France ambitions, altitude camps and heat training.
A mix of pre-Tour racing and altitude camps
Felix Gall returns to the Tour de France with lofty ambitions. Despite this, the Austrian admits that his early season was far from ideal, with several lacklustre results in the spring. After a long break following the Tour of the Alps, Gall returned to competition at the Tour de Suisse in mid-June. There, the Austrian climber just missed the overall podium, even after shedding three minutes during the opening stage.
‘I haven’t had many GC results this year,’ Gall explains. ‘There was always something that didn’t quite work out in the spring, so I was really happy to finally get a GC result at the Tour de Suisse. Maybe Stage 1 was not optimal, but it was just total chaos. I’m still happy with the week, especially the last time-trial. So yes, I’m ready for the Tour de France.’
Nowadays, altitude camps have become a staple for riders preparing to go to the Tour. This requires riders to spend several weeks in the mountains, usually in the Alps or the Sierra Nevada in Spain. For Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, they ventured over to Les Arcs in the Alps in early June.
‘Four riders from the team were at altitude for three weeks before the Tour de Suisse. We travelled from there to the Tour de Suisse, then I spent a week at home in Austria after the race. There, I was using an altitude generator to prolong the effect of the altitude camp.’
‘It [altitude generator] is like a tent you sleep in. In my case, it’s my whole bedroom. I have a machine which makes air with less oxygen than normal. It’s a bit of a challenge to reach the right setting. You need to measure your blood oxygen, because if you’re too low, you don’t sleep or recover so well. It’s a bit of stress for the body, but you get used to it.’
‘We start with the goal of GC’
After reaching eighth place in the overall rankings in 2023, Gall hopes to replicate this feat at the 2025 race.
‘I would say we start with the goal of GC, but there are more outcomes than that for us to be happy in Paris,’ Gall says. ‘If I lose a little bit of time during the first ten days, we’ll need to reassess on the first rest day to figure out where we go forward. If I lose more time than we thought — let’s say, a few minutes — then I can be more aggressive with breakaways and fight for stage wins. Maybe the polka-dot jersey is something that could then come into play.’
‘Of course, it would be nice to be in the top 10 of GC. Top five would be amazing, but a top ten would still be a really good result for me. A stage win is a stage win, so there are plenty of goals for us during the next three weeks.’
The team’s directeur sportif Sébastien Joly echoes this, but also underlines the team’s objective to win stages in the mountains, with days underlined in his diary in the Massif Central on Stage 10 and the third-week summit finishes in the Alps.
‘It’s going to be really stressful’
Speaking to Cyclist ahead of the Grand Départ, the Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale leader is aware of the risks involved during the first week of a Grand Tour. As the cliché goes, ‘you can’t win the race in the first week, but you can lose it’.
‘It’s going to be really stressful. Of course, it’s going to be crazy in the bunch, it’s always like that in the first few days of the Tour.’
‘There probably won’t be too much happening in the GC during the first week, so that’s nice for me. In the past few years, we’ve had some harder stages in the beginning, which can create ‘steps’ in the GC. I don’t think that’s going to happen here this year, so we just need to get through the first week safely.’
During Stage 1, Gall found himself on the wrong side of an echelon pressed on by Alpecin-Deceuninck and Visma-Lease a Bike. This forced the Austrian to lose 39 seconds to the likes of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard in the overall standings. He should take some consolation in the fact that he is currently level with Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič, who were also caught out on Stage 1’s flat profile. Nevertheless, after a flat opening week to the 2025 race, the mountains arrive once the race crosses into the Pyrenees on Stage 12. There, we can expect Gall to rise up the GC rankings as he returns to familiar uphill roads.
‘The whole of the third week is super hard. I like this because once I get through the first week, I’ll be able to show myself in the third week. If I have to name a stage I’m targeting, I would say the Col de la Loze.’
The Col de la Loze will be the final climb on Stage 18’s tough profile, clocking up over 5,000m of elevation gain. The Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale rider won atop the climb in 2023, giving him his first Grand Tour stage victory.
‘We did a recon [of it] at the training camp,’ Gall says. ‘It’s a special one for me, having won there two years ago. Of course, it would be special to win there again.’
To polka-dot or not
During his Tour de France debut, Gall went into the polka-dot jersey early on in the race on Stage 5. He went on to finish as runner-up in the classification, just a handful of points behind eventual winner Giulio Ciccone. At this year’s edition, the Austrian starts as the fifth favourite to win the mountains classification according to betting site Oddschecker.
‘It’s something you don’t really target coming into the race,’ Gall says. ‘There’s not much you can do about it during the first week. I’m not going to jump in the breakaway then, so I’ll need to see how the race unfolds. If you end up in a breakaway over the first big category climbs, then you can go for the points. But you have to evaluate whether it’s worth fighting for or not. If anything, it’s a by-product.’
‘The GC and a stage win remain my two main goals. However, with the polka-dot jersey, you at least get to be on the podium in Paris.’
The heat training buzzword
A lot of talk over the past couple of years has been about heat training. It’s quickly become the hottest buzzword in cycling – if you pardon the pun – with riders hoping to boost their fitness by sweating it out in training.
‘At the altitude camp in Les Arcs, we were using a sauna,’ Gall explains. ‘We were also doing some indoor sessions with a little bit of extra clothing. Some guys put on extra layers on the last climb of the day. What I like to do is take a hot bath. It’s really effective.’
With temperatures expected to reach 35°C at this year’s Tour de France, adapting to sweltering conditions can prove critical in preparing for the race, especially with temperatures rising each year as a result of climate change. Gall, however, feels as though the recent European heatwave was enough for him to feel at home in the extreme summer weather.
‘I think it was a bit more of a challenge last year because we hadn’t really had heat like that before the Tour, then all of a sudden it was like 40°C in Florence. This year, the Tour de Suisse was really hot, Dauphiné was hot, then my week at home in Austria was also hot – super-humid too. So, I feel quite natural in the heat this year.’
A home Grand Tour for Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale
Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale have been the most successful French team at the Tour de France in recent years. With eyes on the home team and a Grand Départ in Decathlon’s home city of Lille, the pressure will be on for the riders.
In the pursuit of stage victories, Joly has drafted in Bastien Tronchon for the punchy profiles in week one, whilst Bruno Amirail will target breakaways and Stage 5’s time-trial around Caen. In terms of mountain support, Aurélien Paret-Peintre and Clément Berthet are two riders with Tour de France top 20s in their palmarès.
‘In general, I think we have a really strong team,’ Gall says. ‘We showed in the Tour de Suisse that we’re not afraid to take responsibility as a team.’
Whilst the Austrian will be paired up with former Giro stage winner Paret-Peintre in the Alps and Pyrenees, it’s Oliver Neasen with whom he’ll be spending the most time over the next three weeks.
‘I’m sharing a room with him at the Tour. He’s a guy I fully trust. He doesn’t take any unnecessary risks and he’s super-experienced. Off the bike as well, I have so much fun with him. At the same time, if I actually have a problem or if I’m stressed about something, I can talk to him. He always knows the right thing to say to make me feel better.’
You can follow Felix Gall and the rest of the Decathlon-AG2R team at the Tour de France 2025. Read our TV guide to find out how to watch the racing live
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