Another Durangoan will be riding in the world’s most famous bike race. Quinn Simmons was officially named part of the Lidl-Trek Tour de France team on Monday on the team’s website.
The 2025 Tour will feature two Durangoans in Sepp Kuss for Visma-Lease a Bike and Simmons. Both are making their return to the Tour for the first time since 2023.
“We are back at the Tour de France,” Simmons wrote on Instagram. “It’s been a two-year-long fight to make, really proud to be heading to my third Tour. Looking forward to three weeks with Lidl-Trek.”
Simmons joins seven of his Lidl-Trek teammates at the Tour. Denmark’s Mattias Skjelmose will be the team’s leader. Italy’s Jonathan Milan will be making his Tour de France debut along with 22-year-old Thibau Nys from Belgium. Italy’s Simone Consonni is making his second Tour start.
Three of Lidl-Trek’s most experienced Tour riders are Edward Theuns from Belgium (four Tour starts), Toms Skujins from Latvia (six Tour starts) and Jasper Stuyven (eight Tour starts).
“We have an ambitious Tour de France team for 2025 with multiple goals that we want to fulfil over the upcoming three weeks of racing in France,” Lidl-Trek Head Sports Director Steven de Jongh said in a press release. “Mattias Skjelmose will aim for the General Classification while Jonathan Milan will make his first appearance at the Tour de France for this year's sprint stages, especially stage one, which, of course, is super important ... The complete group has not raced a lot together but I am confident that we can make it work and have a great race and keep the momentum from an incredible Giro d'Italia going.”
Simmons is expected to ride a lot of kilometers for the team as Lidl-Trek’s puller, used as a workhorse to help pull Skjelmose and Milan.
It will be Simmons’ third Tour start with his first coming in 2022. Simmons, 21 at the time, finished 66th in the general classification, 70th in the points classification, 25th in the mountain classification and 11th in the youth classification in 2022. His best stage was the 148.1-kilometer stage 10 from Morzine to Megève, where he finished 11th. He had one other top 20 stage finish in stage 14 from Saint-Etienne to Mende where he finished 20th.
In 2023, Simmons crashed heavily during stage 5 of the Tour de France. He continued but struggled through the Pyrénées mountains before he stopped after stage 8. He later said staying in the Tour after his crash was “probably the worst decision of my career.”
Simmons has had a great 2025, with a WorldTour stage win at the Volta a Catalunya in April and the Tour de Suisse in June. The 24-year-old also won the 2025 USA Cycling Pro Road National Championship in West Virginia in May to take back the Stars and Stripes national championship jersey.
The Tour starts in Lille on July 5 and ends in Paris on July 27. During that time, cyclists will get two rest days. Cyclists will compete in 21 stages and will ride 3,320 kilometers around France. Out of those 21 stages, there will be seven flat stages, six hilly stages, six mountain stages and two time trials. The total vertical gain will be 51,550 meters (169,127.3 feet).
bkelly@durangoherald.com
