I had no problems with other great athletes, like the boxer Muhammad Ali (aka The Greatest) or Lionel Messi, simply because they were/are active in sports in which their superiority did not diminish the sport’s pleasures. Sure, it was exhilarating to watch Pogačar destroy Jonas Vingegaard and the other pretenders to his throne on the slopes of the mighty Col du Tourmalet on Thursday’s stage 6. But with more than two weeks left in the Tour, the yellow jersey race is as good as over. As one team communications officer said when Pogačar crossed the line on Thursday: “Should we all go home?”
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Is the Tour already over?
Because with 15 stages left in the Tour, the UAE Team Emirates leader has a lead over Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) of 2:42. Pogačar’s young teammate Isaac del Toro sits third, at 3:27, while Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe) is fourth, 3:30 adrift, and another now hopeless hopeful, Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), is fifth, 3:34 behind. Game, set and match.
The worrying thing for Vingegaard, who came into the race brimming with confidence, is that he is closer to third place than to first. “I’m disappointed, I have to be, but sometimes that’s life, and I cannot change it,” he said after the defeat.
It was del Toro, leading his leader up the slope, who began the lethal attack on the Beyond Category (HC) Col du Tourmalet (17.1 km @ 7.3%), 5 km from the summit and 43 km from the finish line. A gap immediately opened. Pogačar took over 500 metres later and extended the lead. Vingegaard stayed within 10 to 12 seconds of his rival for quite a while, but began to fade 2 km from the top of the climb, where the slopes were steepest.
When Pogačar crested the summit, his lead had ballooned to 30 seconds. It had grown to 1:11 when he began the long final climb to the finish (18.7 km @ 3.7%) and was at 2:38 when a tired-looking Vingegaard finally crossed the finish line.
“They put a big attack in on the Tourmalet, and I couldn’t follow,” the Dane said. “I had to settle into my own pace. Over the top, I was not that far away, but on a downhill like this, it’s not suited to me. It was a very tough day, not the day I wanted, but that’s how it is sometimes. I still believe in myself. I still believe my legs will get better throughout the race, so the fight is not over.”
Maybe the fight is not over, but – barring accident or illness – the race almost certainly is.
“It’s a really incredible victory, one of the sweetest, for sure,” Pogačar said afterwards. “Yesterday on the bus, when we were coming from the stage with the guys, there was a lot of hype already talking about today’s stage. Today I woke up at 7, and my mind was going crazy. I was really excited for today. All the guys were really hyped, so I knew it was going to be a good day. We just committed; we were going like nothing to lose – if we explode, we explode. In the end, we succeeded, and I’m super proud of everyone today.”
He noted that he was actually close to his limit on the decisive Tourmalet climb. “I think, for me, if the climb was one kilometre longer, I would also have exploded,” he said. “But I think for Jonas, it was also a little bit too long for his pace. He did his best, he did really good, but there was a little bit of a difference, that you go too much into the red.”
The soon-to-be five-time Tour de France champion came into the stage on the same time as Vingegaard but trailing race leader Torstein Træen (Uno-X Mobility) by a whopping 7:53. Træen crashed on the descent from the Tourmalet and, though he finished the stage, he eventually dropped out of the race with a broken rib. At the time of the crash, he was already nearly 8 minutes behind Pogačar and would have lost the yellow jersey anyway.
A big yellow for rider and team
Træen took the yellow jersey on Tuesday’s stage 4, when he was part of a 34-rider breakaway that was eventually whittled down to 10, with Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) easily winning the sprint to the finish, 12:59 ahead of Pogačar and the peloton because neither the Slovenian nor his Danish rival wanted any part of the yellow jersey.
It was the first Tour yellow jersey for both Træen and the newly promoted Uno-X Mobility. “What can I say? I’m always happy to perform at the Tour, the biggest race in the world, and most of all I’m grateful that the team selected me,” said Træen, who survived cancer and led last year’s Vuelta a España for four days, when he was riding for Bahrain Victorious. He returned this year to the team that had developed him, and both parties are profiting.
Uno-X Mobility General Manager and former world champion Thor Hushovd was also delighted. “It’s a big moment for us,” he said. “We have a different project to others. We are a Scandinavian team with a Scandinavian identity, with riders only from Norway and Denmark. It makes the road more complicated because we cannot pick and choose riders from different countries, and we also have less budget. But if you do a good job and do things properly, then [you can] stand here today and lead the Tour de France.”
Pedersen was also delighted after the stage because this was his first victory in some 300 days and represents a comeback from injuries he suffered in a crash in February that disrupted his spring campaign.
“I would say this was a masterpiece in teamwork,” he said afterwards. “I was suffering a lot on the last climb, but with Quinn (Simmons) and (Mathias) Vacek there, it was a great day. They did incredible on the climbs to pace it well for me and make sure we didn’t lose too much time over the top. They were machines from there to the finish line. What a team effort and what a team win today.”
Kooij is back
Pedersen is not the only sprinter to have marked his return from infirmity with a victory on this Tour. Olav Kooij, whose first year with Decathlon CMA CGM was severely disrupted by a virus that sidelined him for months, powered to an easy victory on Wednesday’s stage 5, the first chance for sprinters to shine in the race.
“After a couple of hard days here already, we had to wait until this day to get this first chance to sprint in the Tour, and yeah, to immediately win is unbelievable,” said Kooij, who was making his debut on the Tour de France. “It means quite a lot. I think just in general, I had a pretty tough spring, and I think just to get back to this level and to keep believing in yourself, and just a few people who believe in you as well, is all you need.”
The 24-year-old Dutchman looked the picture of absolute cool in a chaotic sprint that was affected by a crash with 5 km left to ride, which deprived several teams, including Pedersen’s Lidl-Trek, of their lead-out riders and Vingegaard of his bike (he used that of Victor Campenaerts to finish the stage). Max Kanter (XDS Astana) came in second, with Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) finishing third.
Results 2026 Tour de France Stage 6: Pau to Gavarnie-Gèdre (186.2 km)
- Tadej Pogačar, UAE Team Emirates–XRG 4:32:07
- Jonas Vingegaard, Visma–Lease a Bike +2:38
- Isaac del Toro, UAE Team Emirates–XRG +2:57
- Remco Evenepoel, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe “
- Paul Seixas, Decathlon CMA CGM “
- Florian Lipowitz, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe “
- Juan Ayuso, Lidl-Trek “
- Mattias Skjelmose, Lidl-Trek “
- Lenny Martinez, Bahrain Victorious +3:02
- Sepp Kuss, Visma–Lease a Bike +3:06
2026 Tour de France GC Standings after Stage 6
- Tadej Pogačar, UAE Team Emirates–XRG 21:11:57
- Jonas Vingegaard, Visma–Lease a Bike +2:42
- Isaac del Toro, UAE Team Emirates–XRG +3:27
- Remco Evenepoel, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe +3:30
- Juan Ayuso, Lidl-Trek +3:34
- Paul Seixas, Decathlon CMA CGM +3:55
- Florian Lipowitz, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe +4:00
- Lenny Martinez, Bahrain Victorious +4:21
- Mattias Skjelmose, Lidl-Trek +4:57
- Mathias Vacek, Lidl-Trek +7:10
