'This yellow jersey is unbelievable' - Ben Healy takes Tour de France race lead in Massif Central

Ben Healy was speechless on Bastille Day as his Tour de France got even better in the Massif Central. After winning the stage solo into Vire Normandie four days ago, the Irishman took over the race lead from Tadej Pogačar after a gruelling ride in the breakaway on the 2025 Tour’s first mountain stage - won by Simon Yates.

When a breakaway formed early on in the stage, EF Education-EasyPost made sure they were well represented in the move with Neilson Powless, Harry Sweeny, Alex Baudin and Healy himself all present. Healy and EF boss Jonathan Vaughters heaped praise on the other riders afterwards, with Sweeny getting a notable mention for a huge turn alongside Healy to ensure the group maintained their advantage over the peloton before Healy went solo.

"It was such a tough stage today, I am really really tired and will let it sink in tomorrow," Healy said. "I am just super happy to pay my team back for the work today.

"I don’t know what it was like for them behind me but the last 40km for me was so tough. I was still able to finish third and everyone had a tough time but this terrain was unforgiving today. There was hardly any down so I just had to keep going."

"I think both mean a lot in different ways," he added, when asked to compare the joy of pulling on yellow with taking the stage six honours. "This yellow jersey is more for the team, they really had to work hard for me today to put me in that position. The stage win was the first goal and the yellow jersey feels like a bonus. I have to go with the stage win [as the most memorable] but this yellow jersey is unbelievable."

An ecstatic Vaughters spoke to the media on arrival at the EF team bus at the base of the Mont-Dore climb. He had spent the day alongside DS Tom Southam and had a front row seat of Healy’s exploits.

"It was tense there for a long time," Vaughters said. "At one point we had to make a definitive call as to whether to play for the stage, which would have been totally different with four riders in the break, or if we were going to gamble at all and go all in for the yellow jersey. This is the luxury of having won a stage because we said, 'well we've won a stage, so let's try to get the yellow."

Vaughters and Southam grew anxious when Visma-Lease a Bike took control of the chasing peloton, with Matteo Jorgenson pacing the group before Tadej Pogačar attacked Jonas Vingegaard. Vaughters told the gathered press that the Dutch team’s tactics had further increased the nerves in the EF team car as the stage reached its finale.

"We were pretty damn scared when Visma started accelerating the race," he said. "UAE were riding a tempo, but I don't think they were overly fussed about giving the jersey away. Visma, I don't exactly ever understand what Visma does, they were doing something trying to get rid of Pogačar but that didn’t work and it brought the gap down. That's what hammered the gap down and so we were pretty worried."

Vaughters admitted that he was emotional when the team knew the yellow jersey was in the bag. "I almost choked up right there," he went on. "It was beautiful and everyone deserves big kudos on this. Harry Sweeney was worth probably two minutes of that gap today. After that Alex Baudin kind of finished off the job and then ultimately Ben had to ride the last 15km by himself because no one [else in the break] was helping him. No one was even thinking about helping him.

"To have the mental fortitude to just not even worry about five guys sitting on your wheel and just say, OK, I don't care, I'm just going to take this all the way to the line and hold it together and not explode, it's a truly exceptional effort and there are very few riders, if any riders in the world, that can actually do that extend of an effort like Ben can."

Healy’s first day in yellow will come on Wednesday after the Tour de France peloton enjoys a rest day in Toulouse.