2026 Tour de France Stage 10 Report: Aurillac → Le Lioran — Bastille Day, Pogačar Flicks the Switch on the Pertus

July 14, 2026, Bastille Day in France. As the Tour de France peloton rolled out of Aurillac in the morning, tricolor flags already lined the roads; a little over four hours later, under the finish arch at Le Lioran, the yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) raised his arms, turning the day into the 24th Tour de France stage win of his career, and writing himself into a record no one had ever achieved before.

This was a mountain stage fought from start to finish, with almost no respite. Seven categorized climbs, a 31-man breakaway, a Spaniard riding solo for 36 kilometers, a relay that earned EF the combativity award, and finally the yellow jersey crushing all suspense with a single surge just over 15 kilometers from the finish. Here is the complete account of this stage.

1. Stage Basics: Bastille Day, the Meat Grinder of the Massif Central

The route book for Stage 10 was simple on paper, but anything but simple in content: start in Aurillac, finish in Le Lioran, official distance 166.6 kilometers, official cumulative elevation gain “no less than 3,800 meters.” The CTYeh database, measured against the actual GPX track, came up with 166.9 kilometers and 3,675 meters. These two figures don’t conflict—the race’s published numbers come from the route book’s segment measurements and the official profiles of each climb summed together, while the GPX applies a fixed threshold filter to the elevation changes along the entire track before summing. Sampling density, smoothing algorithms, and whether small urban undulations are counted can all create a hundred meters or so of difference in total gain. In practice, you can simply understand this stage as “approximately 167 kilometers, approximately 3,700 to 3,800 meters of climbing,” meaning an average of over 22 meters of gain per kilometer—a number that qualifies as a hard stage in any international race, and one that cuts to the bone when placed at the start of the second week of the Tour.

The geographical stage for this stage was the Monts du Cantal, on the southwestern side of the Massif Central. This mountain mass is one of the largest ancient volcanic complexes in Europe. Volcanic activity millions of years ago piled up an entire network of radiating ridges and deeply incised valleys; what remains today is a series of narrow roads climbing directly from valley floors. The terrain of the Cantal doesn’t resemble the Alps, where “one big mountain eats an entire afternoon.” Instead, ridges and valleys constantly alternate, with the route weaving back and forth between them, producing the kind of torture Tour route designers love most: short, steep climbs one after another, each individually insufficient to decide the race, but strung together capable of tearing an entire peloton to pieces.

The highest point of the stage was the Puy Mary - Pas de Peyrol, at 1,589 meters above sea level, the highest pass on the road network of the Massif Central. Puy Mary itself is an officially recognized “Grand Site de France,” its conical shape identifiable from a distance, and it serves as the visual symbol of the entire Monts du Cantal. Looking down from Pas de Peyrol, the valleys radiate outward from a central point like the spokes of a wheel, which also explains why the roads in this area are always going up and down—to cross from one spoke to another, you must first climb to the hub and then descend again.

The start town of Aurillac sits at about 600 meters elevation. It is the capital of the Cantal department, historically known for its umbrella industry, and is also the core production area for Cantal cheese, in addition to hosting a significant international street art festival. For the Tour de France, Aurillac is a familiar city—it has served as a stage start ten times. It witnessed Luis León Sánchez’s first Tour de France victory in 2008, and has ties to Bradley Wiggins from the 2005 Tour de l’Avenir era; when the Tour started from here in 2024, Biniam Girmay took an important step on his way to that year’s green jersey. In other words, in the Tour’s narrative, Aurillac has never been just a place to pass through, but a place where stories are born.

The finish town of Le Lioran, meanwhile, is a ski resort in the Cantal mountains, selling snow in winter and hiking and mountain biking in summer, at an elevation high enough that the summer afternoon air is noticeably cooler than in the valley below. The 2024 Tour also finished at Le Lioran, and on that day, in the final sprint, Pogačar was beaten by Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike). That fact became the foreshadowing for the entire story of this afternoon in 2026.

Climatically, July in the Massif Central is typically “cool in the morning, hot in the afternoon, and changeable in the mountains.” Between the summits at 1,300 to 1,600 meters and the valley floor at 600 meters, the perceived temperature can differ by several degrees, and the ridgelines of the Cantal are notoriously windy—with no trees on the ridges, crosswinds are strongest at the summits and at the entrances to descents. This has a real impact on teams’ equipment choices (wheel rim depth, whether to carry a vest) and refueling rhythm: the valley floor is hot enough to require heavy hydration, while the summits and long descents can be cold enough to leave riders without vests with stiff fingers in the final hour.

The stage type is marked as MOUNTAIN in the database, and the viewing time in Taiwan starts at 7 PM. This is the kind of day where you have something to watch from the moment you turn on the TV—no need to wait for the final 20 kilometers, because from the very first minute of the race, no one was willing to relax.

2. Pre-Race Situation: After the Rest Day, Nobody Knows Where Their Legs Are

To understand why the pace of Stage 10 was so fierce from the very beginning, you first have to look at its position in the race calendar: this was the first stage after the rest day on July 13.

To the outsider, a rest day at the Tour means “a day off,” but to the riders, it’s the most difficult day to manage in the entire three-week race. After nine days of high-intensity accumulation, the body has fully adapted to the rhythm of “four to five hours a day, high heart rate, high carbohydrate intake.” Suddenly removing a full day of racing stimulus creates a noticeable disconnect in the neuromuscular and metabolic systems. The pro peloton has a half-joking, half-serious term for this: rest day syndrome. Typical symptoms include terrible leg feel in the first 30 to 60 minutes of the next day’s stage, an inability to get the heart rate up, and pedaling that feels like wading through mud; some riders, conversely, find their power jumps a level after resting. The problem is that no one can know in advance which type they’ll be.

Because of this, the first stage after a rest day is almost always chaotic. Teams looking for stage wins know that on this day, the peloton’s willingness to chase is at its lowest and pace control is loosest, making it one of the best opportunities in the entire race for a large breakaway to succeed. Meanwhile, GC teams are especially nervous on this day, because one morning of bad legs can erase ten days of work. When these two psychologies stack together, the result is that the opening attacks and counter-attacks last longer and are more ferocious than usual.

Add to that the variable of Bastille Day. July 14 holds almost religious significance for French riders: it’s a day when all of France is watching television, a day with the highest sponsor exposure value, and a day when French teams are willing to gamble their entire stage’s strength for a chance at visibility. Historically, the breakaway composition on Bastille Day tends to be especially large and especially difficult to form, because French teams will go to any lengths to get riders into it, and other teams know the French must get in, so attacks and blocks pull against each other well into the race. The fact that this stage’s breakaway didn’t fully form until kilometer 45 was no accident.

On the GC front, coming into Stage 10, Pogačar was already wearing yellow with a considerable buffer. The route design of the first ten days—varied terrain, high-risk sections, finishes requiring positioning and explosive power—was especially favorable to a squad like UAE Team Emirates-XRG with multiple all-rounders. Pogačar himself said as much after the stage: “The early part of the race was well suited to our team’s abilities, that was our advantage in the first ten days.” In other words, he was well aware that part of his lead came from route dividends, and the real test still lay in the Alps.

Among the chasers, Vingegaard remained the closest threat on GC, Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) showed better climbing endurance at the start of the second week than in the first ten days, and Red Bull also had Florian Lipowitz as a second card. The white jersey battle was one of the most crowded of this edition: Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), 19-year-old Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM), Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), and Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) traded blows throughout the stage, with the white jersey changing hands almost every two or three days.

The green jersey was firmly in the hands of Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek). His points lead had already stretched out, but on a mountain stage he still had to do two things: take maximum points at the intermediate sprint, and get through safely without being eliminated. This explains why Lidl-Trek would use its entire team to pull for an intermediate sprint point located at kilometer 25.5 on a day labeled “mountain showdown.”

The polka dot jersey situation was the most delicate at this point. The stage featured seven scoring points, with the summits of the two first-category climbs each worth 10 points—the biggest prize of the entire stage. For dedicated climbers targeting the mountains classification, this was a must-join-the-breakaway day. But for someone already leading the GC, the first-category points on this day could be scooped up along the way if the legs were strong enough. Subsequent events proved that the latter approach was far more efficient than the former.

As for which teams had motivation, the answer was almost “every team except the pure sprint squads.” EF Education-EasyPost needed a stage win to define their Tour; Movistar had achieved little visible in the first ten days; Uno-X Mobility, Alpecin-Premier Tech, and Soudal Quick-Step all had attacking riders capable on climbs; Decathlon CMA CGM, as a French team, wanted both to protect Seixas’s white jersey and to get riders into the breakaway on Bastille Day. With so many motivations crammed onto the same 167-kilometer road, the opening was destined to be anything but quiet.

3. Route Technical Analysis: How the Seven Categorized Climbs Are Arranged and How They Bite

The difficulty of this stage lies not in the length of any single climb, but in their arrangement. The race spread seven scoring points across the entire route, ensuring the peloton had no truly flat section to rest from kilometer 68 onward, then compressed the two first-category climbs into the final 35 kilometers. Here’s a breakdown of each.

Climb 1: Côte de Pailherols (1,043 m, km 68)

The first scoring point was placed at kilometer 68, a telling position. From the intermediate sprint at kilometer 25.5 to this point, there are over 40 kilometers of rolling terrain—the golden zone for a breakaway to form. By the time the peloton reaches Pailherols, the breakaway is usually already established, and the summit points naturally fall to the breakaway riders. The actual result confirmed this: Soudal Quick-Step’s Valentin Paret-Peintre took 2 points, with teammate Louis Vervaeke taking 1. One team sweeping all the points on a climb indicated their control over the breakaway at that moment was quite complete.

Terrain-wise, the route before Pailherols weaves through the Cantal’s departmental roads D990, D59, and D54, passing through villages like Carlat, Raulhac, and Jou-sous-Monjou, each with populations of only a few hundred. The roads are narrow, winding, and full of patches—the kind of riding that feels tiring even at low power, because you’re constantly adjusting your rhythm and can’t hold your output in a straight line.

Climb 2: Col de la Griffoul (1,336 m, km 97.3, Category 2)

This is the first climb of the stage with real substance. Starting from the Brezons valley around kilometer 85, the route enters a long, gradual ascent, climbing along D57 and D39, passing through a string of small hamlets including Landonnes, Chauteil, Le Pessin, Farreyre, Les Roussinches, and Le Bourguet, before reaching the pass at kilometer 97.5. The characteristic of this climb is “long but not steep”: it stretches over a dozen kilometers from valley floor to summit, with unremarkable gradients, but the duration is long enough to cause a breakaway to disintegrate internally from uneven pace-sharing.

The points result here was the first turning point of the stage: Movistar’s Javier Romo took the summit with 5 points, Paret-Peintre 3, EF’s Alex Baudin 2, and Alpecin-Premier Tech’s Ramses Debruyne 1. Romo’s move here wasn’t just about points—he rode away from the breakaway entirely.

Climb 3: Col de Prat de Bouc (km 103.8, Category 3)

After Griffoul there’s almost no descent to recover, as the route passes La Sagnette and immediately connects to Prat de Bouc. This “climb-on-climb” arrangement favors a solo rider: chasers can’t use the aerodynamic advantage of a group on a descent to claw back time, because there’s no proper descent at all. Romo took 2 points here, Paret-Peintre 1.

Climb 4: Côte de Murat (km 118.8, Category 3)

After Prat de Bouc, the route descends via Albepierre to the town of Murat. Murat is one of the few “town nodes” on this stage; the route takes a combination of D39–D3–town roads–D3, meaning a narrow urban section. Immediately after leaving town comes the Côte de Murat climb, with the summit at kilometer 118.8. Romo took another 2 points, Baudin 1. At this point, Romo had taken the summit of three consecutive climbs, single-handedly rewriting the provisional mountains classification.

Climb 5: Puy Mary - Pas de Peyrol (1,589 m, km 135.7, Category 1)

This is the watershed of the stage and its highest point. From the D3–D680 junction at kilometer 121, the route passes Le Peuch, Dienne, and Lavigerie, crossing the uncategorized Col de Serre at kilometer 131.3 and Col d’Eylac at kilometer 134.1, before reaching Pas de Peyrol at kilometer 135.6. In other words, the final section of Puy Mary is actually a “third climb”—the legs have already been softened by two uncategorized passes beforehand.

The final two kilometers of Pas de Peyrol are among the steepest of the entire stage, and the place everyone was waiting for. The Category 1 points structure (10-8-6-4-2-1) made it the key battleground for the polka dot jersey, and its position about 31 kilometers from the finish fell right within the window of “attacking effectively without self-destruction.”

Even more important was its descent. From 1,589 meters down, via the Col de Redondet at kilometer 137.4 and Rudez, all the way to Mandailles-Saint-Julien at kilometer 146.9, this descent is narrow, with sharp corners and rough pavement—the highest-risk section of the entire stage. It was here that Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) crashed on this day.

Climb 6: Col de Pertus (1,309 m, km 152.1, Category 1)

From the Mandailles valley floor, the route connects directly to Pertus with almost no flat ground in between. This is the most important climb of the entire stage—not because it’s the highest (it’s 280 meters lower than Puy Mary), but because of its position: the summit is only about 15 kilometers from the finish, and there’s still a Font de Cère to climb after the summit. This means that someone attacking on Pertus doesn’t need to hold off a chase alone over 30 kilometers of flat road; they only need to survive a descent and one more climb to reach the finish.

From a tactical standpoint, Pertus was the only point on this stage where the “cost-benefit ratio of attacking” was highest. Too early, and the long descent of Puy Mary would erase the gains; too late, and Font de Cère is too short to open a sufficient time gap. This is why everyone circled Pertus before the stage.

Climb 7: Col de Font de Cère (km 163.9)

The final categorized climb, with its summit less than 3 kilometers from the finish at Le Lioran. From Saint-Jacques-des-Blats at kilometer 157.6, the route takes a short section of the N122, then turns onto the D67 and local roads for the ascent, with the summit leading almost directly into the finish area. This climb only offers 2 and 1 points, but it decides the time gaps—on legs already emptied, these 2 to 3 kilometers of climbing are where a 20-second gap becomes 32 seconds, or 44 seconds.

The Technical Final 15 Kilometers

Looking at the 15 kilometers from the Pertus summit to the finish in isolation, it’s actually a complete mini-stage: a descent of about 5.5 kilometers to Saint-Jacques-des-Blats, a 3-kilometer valley transition, then up Font de Cère, and a final 2.9-kilometer descent into the finish. For chasers, the cruelest aspect of this structure is that the descent gives you the illusion of “almost catching up,” and then Font de Cère begins, instantly draining the energy you saved on the descent. Nearly every chaser on this day was fooled by this rhythm at least once.

4. Race Report (1): Kirsch’s First Strike, and Pedersen’s Bike Change Interlude

The moment the flag dropped, there was no such thing as a warm-up on this stage. The first to stick his nose out was Luxembourg’s Alex Kirsch (Cofidis). His attack immediately after the start was a very typical “opening strike”—not really expecting this one move to stick, but setting the tone for the attacks to come: this is the pace today, anyone who wants to rest will be dropped.

Looking at the route, Kirsch’s choice made sense. After leaving Aurillac, the route quickly turns into the rolling road network of the D617 and D20, passing La Course du Mouton and Roannes-Saint-Mary, heading toward Marcolès. This section isn’t flat; it’s a series of short undulations, exactly the terrain attackers love—each small rise can open a few seconds, and accumulated, it forces the peloton to chase seriously.

But on this day, the peloton had a clear reason not to let anyone get too far too early: the intermediate sprint at Lacapelle-del-Fraisse at kilometer 25.5. Green jersey Pedersen had changed bikes early in the stage, a potential problem at the start of a mountain stage—a bike change means having to fight back to the front of the peloton, and in an opening where everyone is attacking, getting back into position is itself a high-intensity effort. Lidl-Trek’s response was to commit their entire team to pulling the peloton, both to get Pedersen back to the front and to ensure no breakaway formed before the sprint point.

They succeeded completely. At the kilometer 25.5 intermediate sprint, Pedersen crossed the line first for 25 points. This decision is worth pausing on: on a mountain stage with over 3,700 meters of climbing, using the entire team’s energy to gain 25 sprint points, at the cost of having almost no teammates to look after Pedersen on the climbs later. But from the green jersey arithmetic, it was rational—intermediate sprint points on mountain stages usually face less competition, making them the cheapest opportunity to build a green jersey advantage, and Pedersen himself is capable of finishing a mountain stage on his own.

The full intermediate sprint results also revealed the composition of the peloton: after Pedersen’s 25 points came Max Kanter 20, Girmay 16, Jasper Philipsen 14, Michael Matthews 12, Mathieu Van der Poel 10, then Harold Tejada 9, Antonio Tiberi 8, Quentin Hermans 7, Leander Slock 6, Einer Rubio 5, Tim Wellens 4, Kévin Vauquelin 3, Paul Hagenes 2, and Hugo Page 1.

Notably in the middle of the list: Tejada, Tiberi, Hermans, Rubio, Wellens, Vauquelin—these aren’t sprinters. Their presence in the top 15 of the intermediate sprint meant they were at the very front of the peloton at that moment, ready to strike immediately after the sprint point. This is a veteran’s move: let the sprint trains pull the speed to maximum, then jump away the instant they ease off.

5. Race Report (2): Van der Poel Lights the Fuse, Abrahamsen Detonates the 31-Man Breakaway

The moment the sprint line was crossed, Van der Poel accelerated.

This was the first true turning point of the stage. Van der Poel’s acceleration on this kind of terrain is almost impossible to ignore—his explosive power can string out the peloton into a long line within a few hundred meters, and the moment he moves, everyone wanting into the breakaway knows the opportunity has come. Alpecin-Premier Tech teammate Debruyne was the first to follow, then a large group of riders. From this moment, the route entered a 20-kilometer melee: attacks, caught, counter-attacks, caught again, wave after wave.

The terrain favored the attackers on this stretch. From Lacapelle-del-Fraisse, the route passes Lafeuillade-en-Vézie onto the D920, through near Prunet and Lasprandine, turning onto the D8 at La Croix d’Aubugues at kilometer 32.9, then via La Joyeuse, Lachaux, and Feneyrols to the D8–D990 junction at kilometer 44.4. The entire section is narrow roads with undulations, with no long straight where the peloton could flatten the attacks with collective speed.

The decisive blow came at kilometer 45. Norway’s Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility) launched here, with a dozen riders immediately following. Behind, in the peloton, another dozen or so riders bridged across in groups. By the time all these riders came together, the front group had swelled to 31.

What does a 31-man breakaway mean? It’s nearly one-sixth of the entire peloton. A breakaway of this size has two opposing properties. The advantage is its power—if everyone is willing to share the pace, 31 riders can maintain an average speed the peloton struggles to match. The disadvantage is that it’s almost certainly uncooperative: more than half of the 31 riders have their own agendas, some want the polka dot jersey, some want the stage win, some are sent as forward support for GC leaders, and some just don’t want to miss out. When a breakaway exceeds a certain size threshold, the internal game shifts from “cooperating against the peloton” to “watching each other.”

And on this day, the main peloton didn’t give them room to cooperate either.

6. Race Report (3): UAE Holds the Rope at 1:25, Then Romo Rides Solo for 36 Kilometers

No sooner had Abrahamsen’s breakaway formed than UAE Team Emirates-XRG moved to the front of the peloton to take control of the pace.

Their approach was one of the most studied tactical details of this stage: they never let the gap exceed 1 minute 25 seconds. That figure was the maximum reached in the middle of the stage, meaning UAE kept the leash taut at a very short length from start to finish.

Why 1:25? Working backward from the result, a reasonable inference is this: UAE’s goal for the day was the stage win itself, not merely defending the yellow jersey. If their goal had been only to protect the GC, letting a 31-man breakaway go 4 or 5 minutes would have been no problem at all—none of those 31 riders posed a threat to Pogačar’s GC position, and letting them fight for the stage win would have saved their own energy. But UAE chose to keep the gap pinned at under a minute and a half. There’s only one explanation: they intended to sweep up the entire breakaway on the final two first-category climbs, so that the stage would be decided among the yellow jersey group.

Pogačar’s post-race comments confirmed this inference: “It was an incredible day. The team did an amazing job. We’ve had this stage circled for a long time, also because two years ago Jonas beat me fair and square in a sprint.” A team “having this stage circled for a long time” means the pace control was calculated in advance, not improvised on the spot.

This taut rope immediately had an effect inside the breakaway. With 31 riders knowing they only had a minute-plus, the incentive to cooperate was even lower—because everyone could calculate that this gap wouldn’t survive to the finish, and rather than working for others, it was better to save energy and gamble on one final attack. So the breakaway blew itself apart under the pressure of the peloton and its own internal non-cooperation, splitting into several groups.

Emerging from the shattered breakaway were Movistar’s Javier Romo and XDS Astana’s Harold Tejada. The two led the way, with chasers behind including Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), Paret-Peintre, Baudin, and Debruyne—all the most aggressive names of the day.

Then Romo did the bravest thing of the entire stage. At the Col de la Griffoul at kilometer 97.5, he rode away from everyone, alone, heading forward.

The next 36 kilometers were the purest solo ride of this Tour up to that point. Romo took the summit first at Griffoul for 5 points, then another 2 at the Col de Prat de Bouc at kilometer 103.8, and another 2 at the Côte de Murat at kilometer 118.8—three consecutive categorized climb summits, all first. For a rider who hadn’t been in the polka dot jersey conversation at all, he propelled himself onto the mountains classification in a single afternoon.

Romo’s route choice over these 36 kilometers is also worth explaining. Between Griffoul and Prat de Bouc there’s almost no descent to recover, and after Prat de Bouc descends to Murat, the Côte de Murat immediately follows, then the long ascent into Puy Mary via Dienne and Lavigerie. This is a route designed specifically as hell for a solo rider: no descent long enough for the chasing group behind to use numerical superiority to eat into the gap, but also no flat section for him to catch his breath.

Finally, he was caught at the foot of the Puy Mary - Pas de Peyrol—less than 40 kilometers from the finish. From the breakaway forming at kilometer 45 to being swallowed around kilometer 135, Romo essentially traded 90 kilometers of racing for three summit points and a full day of camera time. In the pro peloton, this isn’t failure; it’s the only thing Movistar could take from this day, and they took it.

7. Race Report (4): Carapaz’s Relay, Pogačar Detonates on Pertus

The moment Romo was caught, Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) moved immediately.

The timing was perfectly judged. Catching a rider who had been solo for 36 kilometers means the chasing group had just completed a high-intensity effort—the exact moment when everyone’s mind and body relax for a split second. Carapaz slipped away in that gap, quickly stretching his lead to 40 seconds.

Behind him, Decathlon CMA CGM took over pace-making, leading a GC group of about 20 riders up Puy Mary. A French team stepping to the front of the peloton on Bastille Day was itself a statement to the French television audience; but the more practical reason was that they had Seixas to protect—the 19-year-old was chasing on the white jersey front, and Decathlon needed to ensure the climbing pace didn’t suddenly spiral out of control and drop him.

The summit points at Puy Mary revealed the power distribution clearly: Carapaz took the summit with 10 points, Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon CMA CGM) 8, Seixas 6, del Toro 4, Pogačar 2, Vingegaard 1. In other words, at the 1,589-meter high point, the big GC names simply crossed the line in 4th through 6th place, letting Carapaz take the 10 points ahead of them. This was a very clear signal: the yellow jersey group hadn’t started fighting yet.

After the summit, Carapaz continued to extend his lead on the descent. This is an ability he has demonstrated repeatedly throughout his career—a rider who can convert power into distance on a technical descent. By the time he reached the foot of the Col de Pertus, his lead had grown to 1 minute.

It was on this descent that Pidcock crashed. He went down on the Pas de Peyrol descent, but fortunately remounted quickly. Given the difficulty of Stage 10, crashing on the descent from the highest point and still getting back up to continue fighting is itself no small feat—later events would prove that his effort after the crash wasn’t in vain.

As the Pertus climb began, Visma-Lease a Bike sent Davide Piganzoli to the front to raise the pace. Working backward from the result, a reasonable inference of Visma’s calculation was this: they needed to bring down Carapaz’s one-minute lead while simultaneously raising the climbing pace high enough that even if Pogačar attacked, he’d be attacking on legs that had already been softened. This is the most practical approach to dealing with a super-dominant rider—if you can’t beat his explosiveness, try to make him tired before he explodes.

Then, with 1 kilometer remaining to the Col de Pertus summit, Pogačar pressed down.

At that moment, there were still just over fifteen kilometers left in the stage. Pogačar’s acceleration sliced the entire GC group apart. Ireland’s RTE described how he took 45 seconds out of Carapaz within a few hundred meters. The way he flew past Carapaz wasn’t “catching up and riding together”—he passed without slowing at all. That one-minute lead was erased in less than a kilometer of climbing.

At the same time, he opened about 20 seconds on the group of Vingegaard, Evenepoel, and Seixas. Del Toro was dropped here—the young UAE rider had taken 4 points at the Puy Mary summit moments earlier, and the next moment couldn’t follow his own team leader’s pace.

The summit points at Pertus were the scorecard of this attack: Pogačar 10, Carapaz 8, Vingegaard 6, Evenepoel 4, Lipowitz 2, Ayuso 1.

On the 5.5-kilometer descent after the summit, Pogačar didn’t ease off. By the Col de Font de Cère at kilometer 163.9, he took another 2 points for the summit first, with Vingegaard 1. From the summit to the finish was less than 3 kilometers; the outcome was decided.

Behind, the chase produced the final plot twist of the stage. Evenepoel was briefly dropped from the chasing group, only to fight his way back on the short descent before the final climb; then, when Vingegaard faded, he surged out of that group to stretch the time gap further. This is Evenepoel’s typical way of racing—losing once in an explosive contest, then winning it back with time-trialing ability and timing judgment.

The finishing times told the story: Pogačar completed the 166.9 kilometers (GPX-measured) in 3 hours 58 minutes 08 seconds, at an average speed of about 42 km/h; Evenepoel finished second at +32 seconds; Seixas third at +34 seconds, just 2 seconds ahead of fourth-placed Lipowitz (same time); Ayuso and Mattias Skjelmose tied for fifth and sixth at +38"; Vingegaard seventh at +44".

One sentence from Pogačar after the stage captured the weight of this victory clearly: “When I got to the finish today, my legs felt about the same—completely emptied.” He was referring to the day in 2024 when he was beaten by Vingegaard at the same finish. Two years later, on the same road, under the same arch, the result was reversed.

And what he said first in his television interview wasn’t about revenge, but this: “I really enjoyed today, and right up until the last kilometer I didn’t know if I was going to win. Then I remembered it’s a French national holiday, and I wanted to pay tribute to the yellow jersey.”

8. Results Analysis: Full Top 30, and the Three Tiers Behind the Time Gaps

First, the complete results. Here are the official top 30 finishers:

Rank	Rider	Team	Time	Gap
1	Tadej POGACAR	UAE TEAM EMIRATES XRG	3:58:08	Winner
2	Remco EVENEPOEL	RED BULL - BORA - HANSGROHE	3:58:40	+32"
3	Paul SEIXAS	DECATHLON CMA CGM TEAM	3:58:42	+34"
4	Florian LIPOWITZ	RED BULL - BORA - HANSGROHE	3:58:42	+34"
5	Juan AYUSO PESQUERA	LIDL-TREK	3:58:46	+38"
6	Mattias SKJELMOSE	LIDL-TREK	3:58:46	+38"
7	Jonas VINGEGAARD HANSEN	TEAM VISMA | LEASE A BIKE	3:58:52	+44"
8	Isaac DEL TORO ROMERO	UAE TEAM EMIRATES XRG	3:59:39	+1:31
9	Tom PIDCOCK	PINARELLO-Q36.5 PRO CYCLING TEAM	4:00:07	+1:59
10	Lenny MARTINEZ	BAHRAIN VICTORIOUS	4:00:11	+2:03
11	Richard CARAPAZ	EF EDUCATION - EASYPOST	4:00:17	+2:09
12	Davide PIGANZOLI	TEAM VISMA | LEASE A BIKE	4:00:50	+2:42
13	Ilan VAN WILDER	SOUDAL QUICK-STEP	4:00:56	+2:48
14	Ramses DEBRUYNE	ALPECIN-PREMIER TECH	4:00:56	+2:48
15	Egan BERNAL GOMEZ	NETCOMPANY INEOS CYCLING TEAM	4:01:01	+2:53
16	Yannis VOISARD	TUDOR PRO CYCLING TEAM	4:01:13	+3:05
17	Adam YATES	UAE TEAM EMIRATES XRG	4:01:53	+3:45
18	Tobias JOHANNESSEN	UNO-X MOBILITY	4:02:58	+4:50
19	Sean QUINN	EF EDUCATION - EASYPOST	4:03:31	+5:23
20	Pablo CASTRILLO ZAPATER	MOVISTAR TEAM	4:04:53	+6:45
21	Tiesj BENOOT	DECATHLON CMA CGM TEAM	4:04:58	+6:50
22	Carlos VERONA QUINTANILLA	LIDL-TREK	4:04:58	+6:50
23	Jordan JEGAT	TOTALENERGIES	4:04:58	+6:50
24	Matthew RICCITELLO	DECATHLON CMA CGM TEAM	4:04:58	+6:50
25	Nicolas PRODHOMME	DECATHLON CMA CGM TEAM	4:05:00	+6:52
26	Einer RUBIO REYES	MOVISTAR TEAM	4:05:00	+6:52
27	Sepp KUSS	TEAM VISMA | LEASE A BIKE	4:05:17	+7:09
28	Jai HINDLEY	RED BULL - BORA - HANSGROHE	4:05:17	+7:09
29	Brandon MCNULTY	UAE TEAM EMIRATES XRG	4:05:17	+7:09
30	Derek James GEE	LIDL-TREK	4:10:54	+12:46

The most interesting thing about this table is the shape of the time gap distribution. It’s not a smooth curve, but clearly divided into three tiers.

Tier 1: +32" to +44" (2nd to 7th). Six riders within twelve seconds. Evenepoel, Seixas, Lipowitz, Ayuso, Skjelmose, Vingegaard—these are all the riders who, after Pogačar’s attack, could still maintain the same rhythm through the final 15 kilometers. Six riders from four different teams (Red Bull two, Lidl-Trek two, Decathlon one, Visma one), indicating that the second group on this stage wasn’t protected by any single team, but was purely a filter of individual ability. Particularly noteworthy is Vingegaard finishing last in this group—+44", losing 12 seconds more than Evenepoel. Those 12 seconds weren’t an accident on the road, but the result of Evenepoel surging away when Vingegaard was spent.

Tier 2: +1:31 to +2:53 (8th to 15th). This is the group of “dropped but not broken.” Del Toro +1:31, Pidcock +1:59, Lenny Martinez +2:03, Carapaz +2:09, Piganzoli +2:42, Ilan Van Wilder and Debruyne both +2:48, Egan Bernal +2:53. Each rider in this tier was dropped for a different reason: del Toro was shaken off by his own team leader’s attack on Pertus, Pidcock was chasing back after a crash, Carapaz had burned himself out on the earlier solo, and Debruyne had spent the entire day in the breakaway from the start.

Tier 3: +3:05 and beyond. This group is mainly composed of domestiques who had completed their jobs and riders no longer relevant to the GC. Adam Yates +3:45, Tobias Johannessen +4:50, Sean Quinn +5:23, then a cluster of four at +6:50 (Benooot, Verona, Jegat, Riccitello) and two at +6:52 (Prodhomme, Rubio), followed by three at +7:09 (Sepp Kuss, Jai Hindley, Brandon McNulty).

The 30th-place finisher, Derek Gee (Lidl-Trek), finished at +12:46, with a gap of over five and a half minutes to 29th place—the largest single gap within the top 30 of this stage, marking the dividing line between “riders still racing” and “riders just trying to get through the day safely.”

On average speed: the winner’s 3 hours 58 minutes 08 seconds, calculated over the official 166.6 kilometers, is about 42.0 km/h. A mountain stage with 3,700 to 3,800 meters of climbing at an average of 42 km/h is itself the best proof of the day’s intensity—UAE kept the rope taut at under 1:25 the entire way, meaning the peloton never truly slowed down from start to finish.

Finally, worth noting: Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X Mobility), the last finisher among the 175 riders. He crashed on this stage, still rode his bike into Le Lioran, and had the team doctor treat his right hand the next day. The same day’s crashes also took another rider: Pinarello-Q36.5’s Chris Harper, who suffered a hand injury in a crash on this stage and was unable to start Stage 11 the next day. The heroic stories of mountain stages always concentrate at the front, but this 167-kilometer road is just as cruel to those behind.

9. The Four Jerseys: Yellow, Green, Polka Dot, and White Points Structure

Here is the state of the four jerseys after Stage 10.

General Classification (Yellow Jersey)

Rank	Rider	Time/Gap
1	POGACAR	36h15’02"
2	VINGEGAARD	+3’36"
3	EVENEPOEL	+4’06"
4	AYUSO	+4’22"
5	SEIXAS	+4’35"
6	LIPOWITZ	+4’44"
7	DEL TORO	+5’08"
8	SKJELMOSE	+5’45"
9	L. MARTINEZ	+6’34"
10	PIDCOCK	+11’49"
11	BERNAL	+12’15"
12	VAN WILDER	+12’43"
13	PIGANZOLI	+13’38"

Pogačar sits firmly in yellow, leading second-placed Vingegaard by 3 minutes 36 seconds. One detail worth noting here: the finish sprint points also carry bonus seconds. Pogačar took first for 20 points plus 10 seconds, Evenepoel second for 17 points plus 6 seconds, Seixas third for 15 points plus 4 seconds. In other words, Pogačar’s actual GC gain on this day wasn’t just the 44 seconds on the road, but also the bonus seconds differential against Vingegaard. Bonus seconds on mountain stages are often overlooked, but in a Tour that may ultimately be decided by two or three minutes, these seconds are real compound interest.

The top eight on GC are separated by only 5 minutes 45 seconds, and 3rd through 8th are packed within 1 minute 39 seconds—the battle for second place behind Vingegaard is, in fact, a six-man melee. This echoes Ayuso’s comment: “You have to bring your best every day, because you can see there are five or six guys fighting for those two podium spots, and getting on the podium in Paris is going to be a very, very hard fight.”

The gap of over 5 minutes between 9th-placed Lenny Martinez and 10th-placed Pidcock indicates that the “front group” of the GC has closed by this stage—unless someone cracks or crashes, it will be very difficult for anyone outside the top 10 to break back in.

Sprint Classification (Green Jersey)

Rank	Rider	Points
1	PEDERSEN	293
2	GIRMAY	239
3	MERLIER	213
4	PHILIPSEN	205
5	KANTER	192
6	KOOIJ	110
7	POGACAR	107
8	WAERENSKJOLD	89
9	DEL TORO	80
10	TURGIS	79

The 25 points Pedersen took at the intermediate sprint on this day kept his lead over Girmay at 54 points. Note 7th-placed Pogačar—107 points. The yellow jersey sitting seventh in the green jersey standings is a phenomenon unique to an all-rounder of Pogačar’s type: the 20 points he took at the finish of a mountain stage are worth the same as a first place in a flat sprint. He won’t compete for the green jersey, but his presence will continue to dilute the points available to pure sprinters.

Mountains Classification (Polka Dot Jersey)

Rank	Rider	Points
1	POGACAR	42
2	VINGEGAARD	27
3	CARAPAZ	19
4	V. PARET PEINTRE	18
5	SEIXAS	18
6	PRODHOMME	17
7	BAUDIN	16
8	L. MARTINEZ	16
9	DEL TORO	14
10	LIPOWITZ	12
11	ROMO	10

This table is the most naked one of the stage. Pogačar took 10 points on Pertus, 2 on Font de Cère, and 2 on Puy Mary on this day, banking 14 points in a single day; Vingegaard took 6 on Pertus, 1 on Font de Cère, and 1 on Puy Mary, for 8 points total. The result is that the top two in the mountains classification are the top two in the GC.

By contrast, Romo, with his 36-kilometer solo and three summit firsts, collected 9 points total (5 on Griffoul, 2 on Prat de Bouc, 2 on Côte de Murat), bringing his cumulative total to 10 points for 11th place. This isn’t Romo doing anything wrong; it’s determined by the structure of the Tour’s mountains points: the summit first on each of the two first-category climbs is worth 10 points, which is more than the total of three second- and third-category climbs combined. When the strongest rider in the GC is willing to casually grab first-category summits, the polka dot jersey flows to him automatically.

The complete summit points for the stage’s seven climbs are as follows:

Climb	Kilometer	Category	Summit Points
Côte de Pailherols (1043 m)	68	—	1. V. PARET PEINTRE 2; 2. L. VERVAEKE 1
Col de la Griffoul (1336 m)	97.3	Cat. 2	1. J. ROMO 5; 2. V. PARET PEINTRE 3; 3. A. BAUDIN 2; 4. R. DEBRUYNE 1
Col de Prat de Bouc	103.8	Cat. 3	1. J. ROMO 2; 2. V. PARET PEINTRE 1
Côte de Murat	118.8	Cat. 3	1. J. ROMO 2; 2. A. BAUDIN 1
Puy Mary - Pas de Peyrol (1589 m)	135.7	Cat. 1	1. R. CARAPAZ 10; 2. N. PRODHOMME 8; 3. P. SEIXAS 6; 4. I. DEL TORO 4; 5. T. POGACAR 2; 6. J. VINGEGAARD 1
Col de Pertus (1309 m)	152.1	Cat. 1	1. T. POGACAR 10; 2. R. CARAPAZ 8; 3. J. VINGEGAARD 6; 4. R. EVENEPOEL 4; 5. F. LIPOWITZ 2; 6. J. AYUSO 1
Col de Font de Cère	163.9	—	1. T. POGACAR 2; 2. J. VINGEGAARD 1

Best Young Rider (White Jersey)

Rank	Rider	Time/Gap
1	AYUSO	36h19’24"
2	SEIXAS	+13"
3	DEL TORO	+46"
4	L. MARTINEZ	+2’12"
5	PIGANZOLI	+9’16"
6	DEBRUYNE	+11’51"
7	CASTRILLO	+16’10"

The white jersey changed hands on this stage, with Ayuso taking it over. But the real story is the gap: Ayuso leads Seixas by only 13 seconds. Seixas finished 3rd on the stage (+34"), Ayuso 5th (+38"), meaning Seixas gained 8 seconds on the road—and considering the finish bonus seconds (Seixas third for +4 seconds, Ayuso fifth with no bonus), this 13-second buffer is actually very fragile.

Third-placed del Toro trails by 46 seconds. He lost +1:31 on this stage, turning the white jersey battle from a three-way tie into a two-man race in a single day.

As for the most aggressive rider award (combativity prize) of the stage, it went to Carapaz—attacking the instant Romo was caught, taking the 10 points at the Puy Mary summit, and pushing the lead to 1 minute on the descent. There was no suspense in this award.

10. Team Tactical Review: Seven Teams, Seven Different Ledgers

What makes a stage great to watch is how many teams arrive with different objectives. The answer for Stage 10 was: almost every one of them.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG was the only team capable of dictating the script on this day, and they chose the most expensive option: not letting the breakaway go. Holding a 31-man breakaway at under 1:25 meant their domestiques worked from kilometer 45 all the way to kilometer 130, then handed control to their leader on the final two first-category climbs. The risk of this approach is that if Pogačar failed to open a gap on Pertus, UAE would have done a full day of work for nothing and still no stage win. They bet correctly. The collateral cost was del Toro—the young rider was dropped on Pertus, losing 1 minute 31 seconds, and the white jersey became a two-man race between Ayuso and Seixas from then on. But from UAE’s perspective, a stage win plus the yellow jersey, polka dot jersey, and bonus seconds was far more valuable than preserving a white jersey. Yates at +3:45 and McNulty at +7:09 were the evidence of drained batteries.

Visma-Lease a Bike placed their bet on pace. They sent Piganzoli to raise the tempo on Pertus, with the reasonable inference being they hoped to grind down Pogačar’s explosiveness with high, steady power while also eating into Carapaz’s one-minute lead. The strategy was theoretically correct but practically failed—because Pogačar’s surge with 1 kilometer to the summit was exactly the kind of attack that “cannot be defended no matter how fast the pace is.” Vingegaard finished at +44", losing the most of anyone in the top seven on GC, and was also taken for 12 extra seconds by Evenepoel at the end. Kuss finished at +7:09, meaning he was left behind at the foot of the mountain, leaving Visma with no teammates available in the most critical 15 kilometers.

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe was the biggest winner on GC on this day. Evenepoel 2nd, Lipowitz 4th—two riders in the top five simultaneously, and Evenepoel closed 12 seconds on Vingegaard in the GC. More importantly, psychologically: Evenepoel was dropped from the chase group, fought back, and then counter-attacked, proving his mountain endurance is no longer what it was in the first ten days. Red Bull holds two GC cards (Evenepoel 3rd, Lipowitz 6th), giving them room to apply pressure from two lines in the Alps ahead.

Decathlon CMA CGM was the most French team of all. They took over pace-making on Puy Mary, Prodhomme took 8 points at the summit, Seixas took 6 and sprinted to 3rd at the finish. A French team standing in the most visible position on Bastille Day, putting their 19-year-old homegrown talent on the podium steps—this is the best version a sponsor could imagine. The cost was Benoot (+6:50), Riccitello (+6:50), and Prodhomme (+6:52) all left behind, but that was the domestiques’ job anyway.

EF Education-EasyPost traded an entire day for the combativity award and plenty of camera time. Healy was in the breakaway’s chase group, Baudin scored points on both Griffoul and Côte de Murat, and Carapaz took 10 points on Puy Mary and led by 1 minute at one point. They didn’t get the stage win, but they got 3rd in the mountains classification (Carapaz 19 points) and 7th (Baudin 16 points). For a team with no GC contender, this was the most efficient day possible.

Movistar’s entire stage narrative was Romo alone. From the solo move at Griffoul to being caught at the foot of Puy Mary—36 kilometers, three summit firsts. The team’s best finishes on the stage results sheet were 20th-placed Pablo Castrillo (+6:45) and 26th-placed Rubio (+6:52), but no one will remember those two placings; everyone will remember Romo’s silhouette. That’s how the value of a breakaway is calculated.

Soudal Quick-Step played the long game for the polka dot jersey. Paret-Peintre took 2 points on Pailherols, 3 on Griffoul, and 1 on Prat de Bouc, banking 6 points in a day for a cumulative 18 and 4th in the mountains classification; teammate Vervaeke also picked up 1 point on Pailherols. This “pick up points on every small climb” strategy works on days when Pogačar isn’t competing—the problem is that on this day, Pogačar was competing. Van Wilder finished 13th (+2:48) and held 12th on GC, a consolation for the team.

Uno-X Mobility was a team pulled in two directions by this stage. Abrahamsen launched the decisive move at kilometer 45, directly spawning the 31-man breakaway; Johannessen finished 18th (+4:50); but Wærenskjold crashed and finished last. The rewards and risks of an attacking small team on a mountain stage all occurred simultaneously on this day.

11. Portraits: Records, a 19-Year-Old, and One Collapse

Pogačar: One of a Kind on Bastille Day

After this stage, Pogačar became the first rider in history to win three stage victories on July 14. This record surpasses all predecessors, including Jacques Anquetil—Anquetil had twice won the overall title while wearing yellow on this date, but in terms of stage wins, Pogačar is now unique.

The larger context: this was the 24th Tour de France stage win of his career, and his 3rd of this edition. At 27, he is chasing a fifth overall title that would tie the Tour’s record of five wins—held by Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain, Anquetil, and Bernard Hinault.

But this stage held another layer of personal meaning for him. The 2024 Tour also finished at Le Lioran, and on that day he was beaten by Vingegaard in a two-man sprint. He brought it up himself after the race: “We’ve had this stage circled for a long time, also because two years ago Jonas beat me fair and square in a sprint.” Note his choice of words—“fair and square”—this isn’t the tone of revenge, but of a knot he had to untie himself. This time, the gap was 44 seconds.

Carapaz: The Most Efficient Failure

Carapaz didn’t win on this day, but he did something few can do: he moved at exactly the right moment. Slipping away the second Romo was caught, taking the full 10 points at the Puy Mary summit, stretching 40 seconds to 1 minute on the descent—if not for Pogačar’s surge on Pertus, this would have been a textbook stage win. He ultimately finished 11th (+2:09), taking the combativity award and 3rd in the mountains classification. For a former Giro d’Italia champion, this was a day of maximizing his strengths—descending, solo riding, and timing.

Seixas: 19 Years Old, on the Threshold of a Mountain Stage Podium

The 19-year-old Seixas finished 3rd, just 34 seconds behind Pogačar, and closed 8 seconds on Ayuso in the white jersey battle—now just 13 seconds behind. Finishing third on a mountain stage with over 3,700 meters of climbing, dominated by three Grand Tour-level riders, is a rare achievement at his age.

His own assessment was remarkably calm: “The Tour is still a long way to go, you have to not do anything stupid, everyone is at their limit. I’m not even thinking about what I need to do for the white jersey, I’m just desperately trying to hold on to that group.” This quote deserves to be written down by every young rider—he wasn’t focusing on the standings, but on the concrete task of “holding on.”

Ayuso: Taking Back the White Jersey, and Acknowledging the Gap

Ayuso finished 5th on the stage and put the white jersey back on his shoulders. His assessment of Pogačar after the race was unflinching: “Tadej is on another level right now, he’s basically racing a different race than we are.” This wasn’t self-deprecation, but an accurate description of reality from a rider ranked 4th on GC.

Then he turned to what actually matters to him: “It’s good to have the white jersey back. You have to bring your best every day, because you can see there are five or six guys fighting for those two podium spots, and getting on the podium in Paris is going to be a very, very hard fight.” He knows his battlefield isn’t the yellow jersey, but the two positions of 2nd and 3rd on GC.

Del Toro: Losing the Initiative in the White Jersey in One Day

Del Toro was still 4th at the Puy Mary summit, taking 4 points, and the moment Pertus began, he was shaken off by his own team leader, ultimately finishing 8th at +1:31. In the white jersey standings, he went from being right in the mix to trailing by 46 seconds, and dropped to 7th on GC (+5’08"). This is a classic young rider’s lesson: on a team built around an absolute team leader, you must choose between “following the leader’s attack” and “riding your own race,” and on a climb at 1,300 meters, that choice often has to be made within three seconds.

Pidcock: After the Crash, Up Three Places on GC

Pidcock crashed on the Pas de Peyrol descent, remounted quickly, and ultimately finished 9th (+1:59), moving up three places on GC to 10th (+11’49"). Crashing on a technical descent from the stage’s highest point and still climbing back into the top ten over the remaining 30 kilometers requires more than just fitness. For a team of Pinarello-Q36.5’s scale, this was a whole-team day.

Bernal, Lenny Martinez, and Others

2019 Tour champion Bernal finished 15th (+2:53), 11th on GC (+12’15"), continuing to hold the tail end of the front group. Lenny Martinez finished 10th (+2:03), 9th on GC (+6’34"), and sits 8th in the mountains classification with 16 points—for the young French climber, his performance on Bastille Day was a statement for Bahrain Victorious.

As for Wærenskjold, he finished the stage as the last of the 175 riders after his crash, and had the team doctor treat his right hand the next day. His name won’t appear in any highlight reel, but he is the true foundation of the Tour’s finishing rate.

12. The Boos, and the “Dominance Fatigue” of Professional Sport

The atmosphere on the roadside was excellent on this day, but there were also boos. Pogačar brought this up himself after the race, and spoke about it more completely than most would expect.

He first gave thanks: “Thanks to all the fans who came to the roadside today, the atmosphere was amazing, even with some boos. To all the people booing me, they gave us even more strength.”

At the press conference, he placed the phenomenon in a larger framework: “Of course I have haters, haters gonna hate. It’s always been like that, although in cycling there aren’t that many; in tennis or football, for example, there’s much more booing and targeting of a specific team or person.”

Then came the most quotable passage of the stage. He compared his situation to a dominant figure in another sport: “I always think of Novak Djokovic in tennis, his mentality is so strong. I think his career has been one of the hardest in this regard, receiving a lot of boos and unnecessary hatred, just because he’s the greatest.”

The precision of this analogy lies in its identification of a structural fact of professional sport: when one person wins too much, for too long, too obviously, the audience’s emotion shifts from admiration to fatigue, and from fatigue to opposition. This isn’t a judgment on personal character, but a collective reaction to the disappearance of suspense. Tennis has been through this phase, football has, and professional road cycling has now arrived at the same crossroads. When there are 15 kilometers left in a stage and the yellow jersey opens 20 seconds on everyone with a single surge on a first-category climb, two sounds emerge from the crowd simultaneously: one of awe, and one of “here we go again.”

Pogačar’s response had two layers. The first was practical: “If they’re booing me on the roadside, they’re actually booing the whole peloton, because we pass together, you can’t even tell who it is.” This is a very concrete observation—the biggest difference between road cycling and arena sports is that there’s no barrier between spectators and riders; a group passes in front of you in one second at 40 km/h, and boos simply can’t be delivered with precision.

The second layer was about attitude: “Cycling fans are the best of any sport, we should be grateful. As for the people booing, I think they’re just cheering for my teammates, adding fuel to the fire.”

This ability to translate hostility into fuel is, in some ways, a prerequisite for elite athletes. And in the same press conference, he also said the least victorious-sounding sentence of the entire stage: “You never know how long this will last. We just need to be grateful for the moment of being able to race in the biggest race in the world.”

For fans in Taiwan, this passage is worth more than the stage result. We are simultaneously watching the strongest rider of a generation at the peak of his career, and he himself is fully aware that this peak will not last forever.

13. How This Stage Changes the Rest of the Tour

With Stage 10 complete, the second week of the Tour has only just begun, and the truly big mountains are still ahead.

Looking at the shape of the GC, this stage established three things.

First, the yellow jersey’s buffer has thickened, but not enough to coast. 3 minutes 36 seconds over Vingegaard, 4 minutes 06 over Evenepoel—in the face of the big Alpine stages, this number is neither a safety cushion nor a danger signal. Pogačar put it most clearly himself: “The early part of the race was well suited to our team’s abilities, that was our advantage in the first ten days. We’ll see when the big mountains come, like Alpe d’Huez or the Markstein. I hope my form is good on those days too, but the rivals will be ready as well.”

Second, the battle for second place has officially become a melee. Vingegaard +3’36", Evenepoel +4’06", Ayuso +4’22", Seixas +4’35", Lipowitz +4’44", del Toro +5’08", Skjelmose +5’45"—seven riders packed within 2 minutes 09 seconds. This means that on every long climb to come, five or six teams will actively attack with the goal of “taking second,” rather than hiding behind the yellow jersey and waiting. This is good news for the spectacle of the race; for Pogačar, it means he won’t have an easy day—because the motivation to attack him will come from many different directions.

Third, the layer of Carapaz, Pidcock, and Bernal has been pushed onto a different track. The gap between 10th on GC and the front group exceeds 5 minutes, meaning their race objectives from here on will shift from GC to stage wins—which means more former GC riders will actively join breakaways on the mountain stages ahead. This usually raises the quality of breakaways dramatically and makes stage wins even harder to take.

Finally, Pogačar himself provided the best footnote to the entire outlook: “I have to stay very focused, not think too far ahead, stay calm, because anything can happen in one day, you can lose 30 minutes in a single day.”

This wasn’t a platitude. In the history of the Tour, more yellow jerseys have been ended by a single day than worn down over three weeks.

14. A Taiwanese Cyclist’s Perspective: Four Lessons from the Seven-Climb Chain

Finally, back to our own bikes. For Taiwanese cyclists, there are several things from this stage that can be applied directly.

1. How to Start Up After a Rest Day

The real theme of this stage was actually “how to restart after rest.” Pro riders don’t do nothing on a rest day—the standard practice is one to two hours of easy riding, with a few short high-intensity sprints inserted, not for training purposes, but to remind the neuromuscular system that “we work again tomorrow.”

The direct application for amateur cyclists: if you’re riding Wuling or racing on Saturday, not touching the bike at all on Friday is usually not a good choice. A 40-to-60-minute easy ride with three or four 15-to-20-second high-cadence accelerations will make a noticeable difference in how quickly you start up the next day. The same logic applies to the first group ride after a long holiday—don’t treat the first climb as an opportunity to test yourself.

2. Pacing the Seven-Climb Chain: Treat the Stage as “a Race of the Last Two Climbs”

The key to Stage 10 was that the first five climbs didn’t decide the outcome; they determined how much you had left for the final two first-category climbs. Almost everyone who was dropped on Pertus wasn’t dropped because that climb itself was too hard, but because the preceding 130 kilometers had cost too much.

Taiwan has a route that is almost a perfect mirror of this stage: Fengguizui–Wuzhishan–Qingtiangang in succession. The combined elevation gain and distance structure of these three climbs is very similar to the Cantal’s chain of short climbs—each one individually unthreatening, but strung together they force out your pacing ability. The practical recommendation: on the first climb, deliberately ride one level below your “comfortable intensity” (the level where you can speak a full sentence); on the second climb, return to your normal rhythm; only on the third climb are you allowed to push. Most people’s mistake is the reverse—attacking the first climb with the group and relying on willpower for the third.

The Beiyi Highway is another kind of comparison. It’s closer to the Col de la Griffoul type of “long but not steep”: the gradient isn’t enough to force you to slow down, so you unconsciously keep pedaling harder and harder, only to discover in the later section that your legs are gone. This type of climb requires discipline, not courage.

3. Nutrition: Split the Day into Three Segments

166.9 kilometers, nearly four hours, over 3,700 meters of climbing—at this intensity, nutrition isn’t “eat when hungry,” it’s a scheduled job. A simple practical approach is to split the ride into three segments:

• Segment 1 (start to about one-third): Load up on carbohydrates. This is when your stomach is in the best condition and absorption efficiency is highest. Most people eat too little in this segment because “they’re not tired yet.”
• Segment 2 (middle): Maintain steady solid-plus-liquid intake and start paying attention to electrolytes. In Taiwan’s summer valley sections (for example, the lower part of the Yangjin P-word road or the western ascent of Tataka), sweat loss is far higher than in the Massif Central, and sodium replacement is more easily overlooked than calories.
• Segment 3 (final third): Switch to easily absorbed liquids or gels, because by this point blood flow to the digestive tract has been stolen by the muscles. Eating the wrong thing in this segment shows up directly on the final climb.

Using Stage 10’s structure as an analogy for Taiwanese routes: Wuling’s nutrition logic is close to “one long climb,” while a combination like Yangjin P-word road plus Balaka is closer to this stage—up and down, body temperature fluctuating, fragmented nutrition windows. The latter is actually harder to manage, because you forget to eat on the descents.

4. Descending: Technique Is a Trainable Ability

Pidcock crashed on the Pas de Peyrol descent, while Carapaz stretched 40 seconds to 1 minute on the same descent—same road, two different outcomes.

For amateur cyclists, the risk on long descents usually isn’t speed itself, but three things: first, brake overheating (continuous dragging causes disc or rim brakes to lose stopping power); second, cold-induced stiff fingers and slower reactions; third, declining focus in the later stages of a four-hour ride. The corresponding remedies are: use “pulsing” rather than continuous braking on descents; always stop at the summit to put on a vest (especially necessary on the Balaka and Tataka descents); and actively reduce cornering speed when energy is depleted.

One often-overlooked detail: the highest-risk point of this stage’s descent was after the 1,589-meter high point—the moment right after everyone had just made their maximum effort. Taiwan’s descent from Wuling toward Hehuanshan, or from Tataka toward Alishan, has the same structure. The three minutes when your heart rate is just dropping from its peak are the three minutes of worst judgment.

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Stage 10 gave us a complete sample of the Tour: the madness of the Bastille Day opening, a 31-man breakaway, a Spaniard’s 36-kilometer solo, a former Giro champion’s relay, and finally the yellow jersey pressing the switch 1 kilometer from the summit, ending all suspense at once.

This stage also reminded us of something: even in a year that looks decided, the Tour still produces new stories every day. And the sentence Pogačar spoke at Le Lioran may be the most honest conclusion of the day—“You never know how long this will last.”

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