'It's a big dream come true' - who is ex-skier Florian Lipowitz, now third at the Tour de France?

“I never believed that I could be up there when I came to the Tour,” says Florian Lipowitz. His cap is pulled down low, he runs his hand across his face where the first shoots of facial hair are just sprouting from his chin, and he looks down at the white jersey of the Tour de France that he is now wearing. “It’s only my second Grand Tour and I’ve only been cycling for five-and-a-half years,” he goes on, smiling. “If someone would have told me this five years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it, so for sure this is a big dream come true.”

As the Tour de France departs the Pyrenees after three brutal mountain tests that have seen Tadej Pogačar race into a probably unassailable lead over Jonas Vingegaard, GC riders abandon (Remco Evenepoel, Mattias Skjelmose) and others suffer big collapses (Matteo Jorgenson and Enric Mas), it is Lipowitz who is in third and who tops the best young rider classification.

The same Lipowitz who in 2018, alongside his brother Philipp, was one of Germany’s rising biathlon stars – a winter sport that consists of cross-country skiing and shooting targets. A teenage Lipowitz was a cyclist of sorts – he’d been on summer cycle-touring trips across the Alps and Pyrenees with his family – but the Tour de France wasn’t even on his radar; it was only injuries that halted his skiing dreams.

And the Tour still wasn’t on his radar even when he started winning mountain cycling Gran Fondos at the age of 18, and neither was it when he was crashing in his first few bike races as an U23 rider for Tirol-KTM in 2020. But now, two-and-a-half years into his WorldTour career with Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, the 24-year-old is proving himself to be one of the best climbers, and by extension one of the best GC riders, in the bunch.

Just a month ago he finished third behind Pogačar and Vingegaard at the Critérium du Dauphiné, and this Tour he’s surpassing his teammate Primož Roglič, he of five Grand Tour victories, and climbing better than other young upstarts like Oscar Onley and Kévin Vauquelin. Just like Roglič, Lipowitz has had a less conventional path into cycling via winter sports, but now he is truly announcing himself as a cycling champion. Germany, without a GC rider since Jan Ullrich, is understandably getting hyped.

“I am in good shape and it’s a dream come true to now be wearing the white jersey. I'm super happy,” he tells the press after finishing fifth on stage 14 at Superbagnères, moving him up to third overall, where he has a cushion of 1:25 to Onley in fourth.

Lipowitz elevated himself into third partly through the abandonment of Evenepoel, an event that he was “super sad to hear. He was one of the main favourites for the white jersey and the podium.” But part of riding GC is not getting sick or crashing or having heavy legs; Evenepoel’s loss is Lipowitz’s gain. “Now we have to focus on our goals,” he says.

Holding almost a three minute advantage to Roglič, 11 years his senior, logic would suggest that Red Bull would now support the younger of the pair. Speaking 24 hours earlier after Lipowitz lost 36 seconds to Roglič in the mountain time trial to Peyragudes, the team’s sports director Enrico Gasparotto said “it’s still too early to say” when questioned which rider they’d be backing as the race progresses into its third week. “Obviously we want to have them both and it’s definitely not a problem [co-leadership] but many times it’s solved by the legs.”

It’s surely settled now that Lipowitz is the team’s main man. Lipowitz comments that “we have to discuss now in the team what the plan is for the next few days, but I think we are really good and we will fight together.”

Roglič is also asked about it at the top of Superbagnères but gives an unconvincing response. “For sure we will do our best with the team,” he answers, refusing to say that he’d park his own ambitions to ride for Lipowitz. But he is enthusiastic about what the German is doing. “It’s amazing,” he says. “At that age I didn’t even ride a bike. I think it’s really good.”

Gasparotto rated the podium battle as a fight between “two stellar riders, Jonas and Pogi, and then a bunch of young kids who have an incredible level and are fighting for the white jersey.” But it’s not just the maillot blanc they’re targeting – they're going after third or even second place.

And Lipowitz, the softly-spoken, shy boy from southern Germany, is in pole position after the first round of mountains. “Two weeks are almost over, but everyone knows that the third week is the hardest,” he says. “If you look at the stages, they look really tough with lots of climbs. We’ll have to see how my legs feel. I hope they stay the way they are.”