The 113th edition of the Tour de France is just one stage away from crowning one of cycling’s youngest legends, as Tadej Pogacar all but secured a record-equaling fifth overall title following Saturday’s grueling 20th stage on the iconic Alpe d’Huez.
With Sunday’s final stage consisting of the traditional ceremonial procession through the streets of Paris, the 25-year-old Slovenian only needs to cross the finish line to claim his fifth Tour de France crown in just seven years of competition. This achievement will place him alongside cycling’s all-time greats Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain as the only five-time winners of the sport’s most prestigious race — and he will become the youngest rider ever to reach this historic milestone.
In a display of good sportsmanship and team confidence, Pogacar crossed Saturday’s finish line in fourth place, arm-in-arm with his UAE Emirates-XRG teammate Isaac Del Toro. Del Toro’s strong performance throughout the stage locked in his third place overall classification and secured him the white jersey for the best young rider, edging out exciting 19-year-old French prospect Paul Seixas. Pogacar even allowed second-place overall contender Remco Evenepoel, the Olympic champion who finished second on the stage ahead of American rider Sepp Kuss, to close the gap in the general classification by roughly 40 seconds. Going into Sunday’s finale, Pogacar holds a commanding 6-minute 26-second lead over Evenepoel, with 22-year-old Del Toro sitting another three minutes 16 seconds back in third place.
The day belonged to Ecuador’s Richard Carapaz, who claimed victory on the 170.9-kilometer Queen stage, a brutal route featuring four massive mountain climbs. The win marked Carapaz’s second stage victory in three days, and it also earned him the polkadot jersey for the Tour’s King of the Mountains, pushing him to eighth place in the final overall rankings. “It was great to win here with a commemorative jersey,” Carapaz said after the finish. “In the end, it’s been a dream Tour.”
The stage’s dramatic final kilometers brought heartbreak for Kuss, who had built a 15 to 20-second lead over Carapaz before suffering two crashes in the final 7 kilometers. On the second crash, safety netting along a tight cliff-side bend saved Kuss from a potentially catastrophic fall into a ravine. Though Kuss fought hard to finish, he was ultimately overtaken by Evenepoel as Carapaz crossed the line first, ending his hopes of a stage win and taking the King of the Mountains title. The outcome was an additional disappointment for Kuss’s Visma-Lease a Bike team, which lost defending champion and team leader Jonas Vingegaard to a crash just one week prior.
Carapaz started the day in a breakaway group of five riders, launching an aggressive attack to collect the mountain classification points he needed to secure the polkadot jersey. He claimed maximum points on three of the route’s major climbs: Col de la Croix de Fer, Col du Telegraphe and Col du Galibier, whittling the breakaway down to a head-to-head battle with Kuss. Kuss pushed ahead to cross the Col de Sarenne, the final categorized climb 15 kilometers from the finish, around 10 seconds ahead of Carapaz, but his misfortune on the downhill section derailed his bid for victory.
Behind the leading pair, 19-year-old Seixas launched a late attempt to overtake Del Toro for the white jersey, but he lacked the energy to close the gap. When Del Toro launched a counter-attack, the young French rider was immediately dropped. Seixas finished the stage in 10th place, 2 minutes 55 seconds behind Carapaz, which was enough to retain his fourth place overall by more than a minute over compatriot Lenny Martinez, who finished fifth. The result capped an astonishing Grand Tour debut for the teenage French prospect.