Tadej Pogacar took a record-equalling fifth win within the Tour de France on Sunday, becoming a member of Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain within the canon of the Tour’s most profitable cyclists. In an exhilarating finale to the Tour, Mathieu van der Poel took his second stage win of the race on the Champs-Élysees, keeping off the pursuing pack of sprinters by a tyre’s width, after breaking clear with Pogacar on the ultimate climb of the Butte de Montmartre.
Merckx, broadly thought-about the greatest-ever bicycle owner due to the breadth of his achievements past the Tour itself, believes Pogacar will now go on to win a sixth Tour. “I don’t think he’ll be content just to draw level with me and the other champions,” the 81-year-old Belgian mentioned. “He’ll soon break our record for Tour victories.”
From Montjuic to Montmartre, Pogacar and the stifling temperatures suffocated the 2026 Tour. A race staged in opposition to the backdrop of heatwaves and wildfires, culminated within the inevitable – a fifth win for the relentless Slovene.
Pogacar had no equal on this Tour de France, breaking data on two of probably the most daunting climbs in biking, the Col du Tourmalet and Alpe d’Huez, and shepherding his protege, Isaac del Toro, to third place within the ultimate standings.
In one other life, the Olympic highway race champion, Remco Evenepoel, would in all probability have received his first Tour, and French debutant Paul Seixas climbed on to the rostrum. It is their misfortune, and that of Jonas Vingegaard who crashed out of the Tour, to race within the period of Pogacar and his impregnable UAE Emirates XRG workforce.
A leaner, meaner and extra pushed Evenepoel proved his doubters improper, reasserting himself as a real contender for victory in Paris. But the Belgian is aware of too that Pogacar could have to retire earlier than that occurs.
The statistics inform the story of one of the crucial dominant performances within the trendy historical past of the Tour. Pogacar received the race total by virtually six and a half minutes, took 5 phases and set record instances for legendary climbs within the Pyrenees and Alps. He may need received six phases, had it not been for his determination to permit Del Toro to win on stage two.
“I did really good this Tour,” Pogacar mentioned after Saturday’s stage to Alpe d’Huez, whereas acknowledging the dangerous luck of rivals akin to Vingegaard and Florian Lipowitz, each of whom completed on the rostrum in Paris final 12 months and each of whom crashed out of this 12 months’s race.
“It’s the Tour, it’s three weeks,” Pogacar mentioned. “A lot of shit can happen.”
But his unrelenting success comes with caveats. It could be naive to have fun a five-time Tour winner with out understanding the context. There is little doubt that Pogacar is a phenomenon, however his entourage has baggage from much less blissful instances.
His workforce supervisor, Mauro Gianetti, mentioned: “Pogacar is so strong that no matter the team, there will be doubts concerning him.” But 24 hours earlier than the peloton arrived in Paris, Gianetti mentioned that he was a “victim” of previous scandals involving riders on his groups.
The most notorious is the Saunier Duval scandal of 2008, when the Gianetti-managed workforce give up the Tour after their star rider, Riccardo Riccò, examined constructive for a blood-doping agent. Riccò was fired, alongside together with his teammate Leonardo Piepoli, and sponsors withdrew funding.
“I made the mistake of taking them in my team,” Gianetti advised L’Équipe. “I should have reacted differently, been clearer with the press, explained that I was a victim.
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“You never know what your children do in their rooms, and you certainly don’t know what the riders do at home. Before signing Riccò, I asked him to go to the UCI [the sport’s governing body] to be tested. The UCI then sent me a document stating that he did indeed have a naturally occurring hematocrit level above 50%. I feel like a victim of this.”
The previous anxieties round Pogacar’s entourage resurfaced after the Slovene and Vingegaard have been subjected to night-time exams by the Independent Testing Agency final weekend. The early hours exams have been supported each by the Tour de France director, Christian Prudhomme, and the UCI.
In a press release launched three days after the exams, authorised by a Paris choose, the UCI described the controls as “an exceptional measure, reserved for limited and justified circumstances.”
Despite the interrupted sleep, Pogacar was accepting of the exams. “If this is necessary to prove that we are riding clean,” he mentioned, “then I totally accept it. I commit to it.”
The ITA has reiterated to the Guardian that “no public communication is made regarding negative results” but in addition that “there is no date from which all tests can be considered definitively negative”.
To some extent, this leaves the achievements of Pogacar and people of his longstanding rival Vingegaard in limbo. Regardless, the Slovene is anticipated to experience August’s Vuelta a España, in an try to declare the one Grand Tour title he has but to win. Right now, the 27-year-old is on the peak of his powers and few would guess in opposition to him finishing a Grand Tour grand slam.
Next 12 months, the Tour seems to be northwards, in direction of a Grand Départ in Scotland. Speaking to the Guardian final week, Prudhomme described Edinburgh as “a magical city”. “Every time the Tour has visited Great Britain, it has helped the Tour de France grow,” he mentioned. “If the Tour can help bring major cycling events back to different parts of Great Britain, that would be fantastic. The UK has given the Tour an enormous amount.”
