Pidcock surges up standings as Schmid takes first stage win

Briton closes on second-placed Vingegaard, who in turn is unable to cut Pogačar’s lead

18 Jul 2026 - THE GUARDIAN / Sport

Jeremy Whittle

Tom Pidcock leapt up the overall standings in the Tour de France, briefly climbing as high as second place, after a fulminating stage to Belfort ended in a first Tour win for the Swiss rider Mauro Schmid.

Pidcock was one of the key instigators of a mass breakaway that formed on the rolling roads of the Jura and Doubs, on the long approach to the 9km climb of the Ballon d’alsace, overlooking Belfort.

A stage that the race leader, Tadej Pogačar, had described as “weird” produced an unexpected outcome as Pidcock, who had started the day 7min 43sec behind Remco Evenepoel, moved into fourth place overall, only nine seconds behind the Belgian.

“It was always the objective to make it into a break,” the double Olympic gold medallist, riding for Pinarello–q36.5, said. “I think it worked out perfectly. I was also after the stage win, but it was difficult in the end without any teammates. But I can’t be disappointed.”

Pogacar, meanwhile, is edging closer to a fifth Tour de France win, which would officially tie him with the other five-time winners – Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin.

Lance Armstrong won seven Tours before being stripped of them all for doping. Asked whether he considered the record for Tour wins to be five or seven, Pogačar smiled and batted the question away. “I got this question in the morning,” he said. “I can’t say anything. I don’t go for records, I just want to finish with yellow in Paris. This is the main focus.”

The longest stage of the 2026 Tour was another fast and furious race and for once the breakaway did succeed. A third of the peloton was unleashed on the rolling road to the Ballon d’alsace as Pogacar and his UAE Emirates-XRG team finally loosened their grip on the peloton.

Exhibiting the first signs of fatigue immediately after the stage finish, a red-eyed Pogacar described the peloton as “flying”.

The biggest winner of the original group of 37 that grew to more than 50, but finally dwindled once they entered the climbs of the Vosges, was Pidcock, who also took third place in the sprint finish behind Schmid.

Pidcock’s uneven Tour has seen him almost win in Ussel, crash into a parked car in Le Lioran and hover on the edge of the top 10 but he is now clearly becoming more competitive as the race continues and can reasonably start to contemplate a top-five result.

For a rider who in the past had admitted that he finds the demands of the three-week Tour mentally draining, Pidcock has found his focus at just the right moment. A stage winner on Alpe d’huez in 2022, Pidcock faces five days of racing before the peloton returns there on 24 and 25 July for back-to-back stage finishes.

The high speeds and mass break on the road to Belfort were further indications of how the absence of many sprint stages has affected the race. “Everyone’s looking for opportunities because they are few and far between,” the Netcompany Ineos director of racing, Geraint Thomas, said. “Obviously the Paris stage has changed now and it does put more emphasis on the sprinter days.”

Even so, there is a feeling that some in the peloton have also been keeping their powder dry for the intimidating final week, which includes five summit finishes, the first two of which come this weekend at Le Markstein and the Plateau de Solaison.

“In the earlier stages you definitely saw that, when there was only one rider even trying,” the EF Education-EasyPost sports director, Charly Wegelius, said. “That told a story about the fatigue and what was coming down the road.”

With so many of the Tour’s stages favouring Pogacar and his UAE team, Wegelius said there was a realisation that “so-called medium mountain stages could be out of reach and lumpy sprint days have become quite hotly contested”.

Pidcock’s elevation to a higher ranking overall has also created a further headache for the secondplaced Jonas Vingegaard, who now has to monitor riders from four different teams: Evenepoel, with Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, Pinarello Q36.5 and Pidcock, Juan Ayuso of Lidl-trek and the French teenager Paul Seixas, riding for Decathlon CMA CGM, as the race heads into a tough weekend of mountain racing in the Vosges.

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Pogačar has discovered Tour de France fans love heroic defeat more than crushing victory

Tour stars are boring because they win too much or adored because they find ways to not win

18 Jul 2026 - THE GUARDIAN / Sport

William Fotheringham

Enduring the ire of French cycling fans is a rite of passage for prolific Tour de France winners, as Tadej Pogačar seems be finding out. The first catcalls came on Tuesday’s stage to Le Lioran in the Cantal, and although we can hope for a little courtesy, there is no reason to assume we won’t see more of the same in the Alps next week, because there are zero grounds for assuming the Slovene’s dominance will slip. In fact, given the mountains that await, Pogi and co will probably up the ante.

Chris Froome has been there and Eddy Merckx went there. The American We Do Not Name spent two Julys hoping no one would bung urine at him, while Bernard ‘The Badger’ Hinault and Jacques Anquetil had their moments too. To understand why the big winners don’t always get red carpet treatment, let’s fly back to the 60s, to the rivalry between Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor. Master Jacques and Poupou, a simplistically pantomimic duality: cold, clinical Jacques, who based his Tours on the time-trial stages, and warm-hearted Poupou, the noble peasant who tried his utmost but couldn’t quite land the big one, although he became the most popular athlete in France and the hallmark for valiant failure in every walk of French life. Let’s call it the MJPP principle.

That set the tone, and it’s still there if you look at one popular Instagram feed, the Federation Francaise de la Lose (motto: la defaite est en nous), which has 350,000 followers and is affectionately dedicated to those who don’t win, and they struggled like all of France must have on Tuesday evening. The FFL helped organise Thibaut Pinot’s farewell party on a stage through the Vosges in 2023, and that day witnessed a perfect illustration of the MJPP principle: Pinot made a heroic solo attack through his adoring fans (hooray) only to be chased down by the clinical UAE steamroller who gave Pogacar his umpteenth mountain stage win (boo, he’s behind you).

This view of cycling says that Tour stars are either boring and unpopular because they win too much, or exciting and adored because they find interesting ways to not win. That background made Anquetil and Merckx unreadable for the French press and public and explains why at times Hinault was derided as unlikeable – this for the guy who produced a bunch sprint win on the Champs-elysées, because he just fancied it – while in 1986 the Badger earned much love when he lost a sixth Tour by being quixotically aggressive.

The one recent multiple Tour champion who didn’t fit was Miguel Induráin. I don’t recall pushback against Big Mig in the five years when his victories went from surprising to predictable, but this is because the he was exceptional. He won before doping suspicions became a given, and he and his Banesto team achieved those victories almost apologetically, with the unreadable smile on that handsome Navarran fizzog never slipping once.

Banesto were considerate: in his pomp, Big Mig won time trials, and although he ripped the field to shreds on at least one mountain stage per year, someone else always won so he was never accused of hogging the sweeties. He rode like Anquetil with the demeanour of Poupou, lulling public and press into a catatonic state. There were yawns, but no boos.

Post-Indurain, it got more complicated, in a decade in which doping took centre stage, 1998 to 2008. The years of “two-speed cycling” added an ethical twist to the MJPP tendency: Tour stars had to be clean, and they had to be perceived to be clean, and there was the implication that underdogs finding interesting ways not to win were occupying the moral high ground.

The brickbats and urine were directed at Lance Armstrong once it was obvious he was doping but uncertain he would ever be caught. It was the perfect storm: a prolific Tour winner, cold and clinical and ethically questionable. It wasn’t just him: in 2011 when Alberto Contador turned up while his clenbuterol positive was subject to inquiry he was roundly booed during the team presentation.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen, but if at times in the next seven days, Pogacar seems to be riding through a sea of catcalls, here’s why: the French want their heroes to win like Anquetil but smile like Poulidor, while post-armstrong they don’t want even the remotest doubts about the winner’s probity. It makes no matter if, like Pogačar, a rider wins with charisma, with ethics that have rarely if ever been questioned.

For some, it is an impossible triangle to square.